


A Season in Hell

by ishafel



Series: Sport of Queens [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:11:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anything can happen in a World Cup year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

It was their first Christmas as a family, and Harry wanted it to be perfect. Last year Astoria had had Scorpius, and Ginny'd had Lil and the boys. Draco had gone to his parents' for Christmas and Harry had gone to Ron and Hermione's, and they'd both gone to a drinks party at Andromeda Tonks' on Boxing Day and pretended not to recognize each other. The only decent part had been the sex afterward.

He was trying too hard, he knew he was trying too hard-- the tree he picked out was too big, the presents too expensive, there was too much food. He stuffed stockings for the kids, bought crackers, enlarged the spare bedroom to fit two sets of bunkbeds.

Draco didn't help much, beyond giving advice. The Malfoys didn't really celebrate. Maybe that meant they did something arcane, some freaky ritual that was only for purebloods. Maybe they just thought Christmas was too flashy, too tacky. Most of what he had to say was, “Merlin, Potter, they're just kids, they won't care if the decorations match,” and “Come to bed, Harry, it's freezing,” when Harry was still wrapping parcels at midnight.

He was tired, though. Harry did understand. The Cannons were having an outstanding run, and it was mostly due to Draco. But he was working for it. The night before the kids were due in, he'd planned to trim the tree, but watching Draco droop through dinner changed his mind. 

He set the dishes in the sink and turned around, and he was fairly sure Draco flinched, anticipating his next request. “Fuck Christmas,” Harry said instead, “come into the bedroom and I'll give you an early--.”

“Don't say stocking stuffer,” Draco interrupted. “Please, Potter.” But he got up and crossed the kitchen to kiss Harry and take his hand. “Let's go. I'll even sit on your lap and call you Santa.”

When Harry pushed Draco down, when he got Draco's shirt unbuttoned, he remembered this was what he wanted, too. Sometimes being with Draco was work, sometimes just being an adult with a job and kids and an ex-wife was work-- but work meant he could have Draco underneath him like this. 

It felt like forever since they'd even fooled around, since they'd done more than kiss good night or goodbye out of habit. Draco's mouth was hot and hungry on Harry's, and his hips actually came off the bed to thrust against Harry's body. Harry stopped fumbling with tiny shirt buttons and started on the fly of Draco's jeans. 

When he closed his mouth around Draco, the other man shuddered and went still. It wasn't Harry's favorite thing, but he knew Draco loved it, and had probably earned it, helping Harry string popcorn and make chains out of colored paper. And not murdering him when Harry yelled at him for doing it wrong.

So he sucked Draco's cock with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, while Draco's fingers tightened on his shoulders. For a long time he hadn't done it at all, because fucking someone's mouth didn't make you gay, but letting someone fuck yours-- letting someone fuck you in the ass, everyone knew that was gay. And for a long time Harry hadn't been able to imagine anything worse.

It helped that Draco was careful, even close to the edge, that he never pushed for more than Harry was comfortable with. And, although Harry knew better than to admit it, even here, even to Draco-- it helped that Draco wasn't too gay. He didn't want or expect to hold Harry's hand in public, to link arms with him on the street, to kiss him passionately outside the locker room on game days. He didn't wear pink shirts, or purple robes, or makeup or jewelry, or have his hair styled every week. He had what was quite possibly the straightest job in the wizarding world. He was gay, sure, Harry was gay; they both liked fucking other blokes. But they weren't--. It was an arbitrary and unfair line to draw, and Harry knew it, but he couldn't help himself.

So he sucked cock, but he didn't let himself like it, not the smell or the taste or the cool hard wood under his knees or the way Draco writhed against him, too excited to be entirely gentle. Or the way Draco tugged at his hair, until Harry stopped. “I want you to fuck me, Potter, I want to feel you come with me.”

Without pausing, almost without breathing, Harry had him on his back on the bed. And maybe it was gay to think how beautiful Draco was, flushed and shaking and practically begging for it, but Harry figured even a straight man would have had trouble saying no. He was still mostly dressed, and he pushed his trousers off while Draco slid his own jeans past his hips. Lube, condom-- and he slid into Draco like a ship coming into harbor.

But after, after they'd tidied up and the sheets had been changed and Draco was asleep, Harry got up and did the laundry and trimmed the tree. He was so tired his body burned with it, but the fuck had done nothing for his nerves. He sorted through another load of clothes, turning out the pockets of Draco's jeans, and a St. Mungo's visiting pass fell into his hand. 

So Draco was still going to see Brendan Lynch, Harry thought, still visiting graves. One of the things he'd always loved about Draco was his sense of duty. This was too much, though, this was going too far. Lynch was nothing to Draco, and his injury had been an accident. Impossible to resent a man who was brain-dead, and yet Harry did, resented fiercely the time Draco spent beside a hospital bed, and how much it took from him.

Lynch was gone, without even the decency to be dead and buried, and Harry hated the whole family and their ridiculous faith in miracles that never came. He tossed the pass on the counter with Draco's keys and mobile, and sat on the couch watching the flicker of the tree lights.

In the morning Draco shook him awake. “Come on, idiot,” he demanded, “I insist you buy me one last decent, child-free breakfast before the horde descends.”

“You went to see Lynch again,” Harry said, his back cracking when he stood. “I wish you wouldn't, Draco. I wish you'd let him go.”

“I wish you'd let it go.” The words came out sharp, and Harry waited. Almost immediately, Draco shook his head, taking them back. “You'd do the same thing, Harry, and you know it.”

“I wouldn't,” Harry said, but he didn't make an argument of it. “Give me a half an hour to take a shower and get dressed, and I'll spring for a fry-up.”

Breakfast was more like brunch; afterward they drove the car to King's Cross to pick up the children, and Harry could barely keep himself from shaking he was so nervous.

“It'll be okay,” Draco promised, touching Harry's thigh when he should have been shifting and causing the Golf to groan in agony. “They're teenagers, Harry. Keep them fed and lock the liquor cabinet up and stay out of their way, and we'll be fine.”

“That's easy for you to say,” Harry mumbled. “You've only ever had one at a time, and everyone knows Slytherins never do anything wrong until the adults' backs are turned.”

Draco laughed. “Merlin, it does seem odd that we're the adults, doesn't it?”

Harry knew what he meant. He had gray in his hair, and a bad back; Draco was months away from losing his job because he was too old to be worth the risk of a contract-- but most days he still felt like they were twenty and had their whole lives in front of them. “Speak for yourself,” he protested. “We Gryffindors were very mature and responsible teenagers.”

He'd meant it as a joke, and it was only after Draco flinched that he realized. “Hey. Malfoy. That was sarcasm of the highest order. We were just as crazy and immature-- I didn't mean--.”

“It's okay,” Draco said, and he was smiling a little when Harry looked over at him. “I know what you were trying to say. I was a terrible snob, and you were completely reckless, and thank Merlin the kids aren't like that, right? I mean, Scorpius is perfect, but your lot aren't horrid little menaces, are they?”

They weren't. Harry has his doubts about Scorpius, though. When he and Draco went up to Hogwarts to break the news about their relationship to the kids, he'd been shocked by how much Scorpius looked like Draco at that age, sneer and all. 

They stood at King's Cross with the other parents, most of whom were your basic two parent, traditional families, although there were more single parents now than when Harry was a student. He and Draco were the only obviously gay ones, and Harry felt like everyone there was staring. Thankfully Draco started talking to Hermione about the O.W.L.s and didn't notice Harry's self-consciousness. By the time the train pulled in, they were deep in an argument over Rose and Scorpius's relative cleverness. Hugo wasn't mentioned.

And then the kids were there, and all Harry could think about was how much they'd grown, and they were all talking at once, sorting out luggage, and there was no time for awkwardness. Eventually they all crammed into the Golf, and Draco peeled out of the parking lot. “Merlin,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror, “Harry, we're going to have to get a van.”

Harry turned. James, Scorpius, Lily and Albie, plus four lots of bags and brooms and books, none of which had been shrunk quite small enough. It was a good thing they'd sent the familiars on to the grandparents', because not even magic would have fit two owls, a cat, and a boa constrictor in. “We're not getting a van,” he said. “We aren't that old.”

And then he waited for it: James's mouth was already opening. James had always been Ginny's baby, and since the divorce he and Harry hadn't gotten along. Well, there went the happy family Christmas. 

But James surprised him. “Mr. Malfoy,” he said politely ignoring the opportunity to say something nasty about old people, people movers, and Draco's shabby Golf. “Do you think you think I could come to your game tomorrow?”

“I want to, too,” Lily chimed in. “Jack said--.”

“Me, too.” Albie didn't even like quidditch, had never liked it, alone out of all the Weasley descendants. “Please, Mr. Malfoy?”

Draco shot Harry a dubious glance. “That's up to your dad,” he said. “Scorpius always comes when he's home, and sits with his grandparents, but I think your dad might've had something planned for you lot.”

Harry had; he'd planned to take them Christmas shopping in Diagon Alley. He'd wanted some time alone with them, without Draco and Scorpius along. Maybe, though, it was more important that they learn to get along. “Not at all,” he said, and Draco's thumb brushed the back of his hand sympathetically. “I'd love to take you lot to the game.” And sit with the Malfoys, he thought glumly, picturing Lucius sneering at his redheaded children, Narcissa's martyred sighing about the weather.

“That's so brill,” Lily said ecstatically. “Don't you guys think? Jack?”

Her brothers ignored her. But, “Yeah,” Scorpius agreed, with much less enthusiasm. “Brill.”

It was Draco's turn to flinch. “Jack?”

“Everyone calls me Jack now, Dad,” his son said. “Scorpius is so, like--.”

Harry waited for Draco to explode. Scorpius was a terrible name, fair enough, but having Scorpius-- Jack-- change it like that would make Draco furious. And Jack would be too Muggle, too prosaic. To his surprise, though, Draco just laughed. “Jack it is. Do me a favor, tell your grandfather during the game, so he can't murder you.”

When they got to the flat, and unloaded the bags, Harry expected the arguments to start. The flat was small, they wouldn't like sharing a bedroom, they wouldn't want pizza for dinner. Ginny had always made the most elaborate welcome dinners. But there was only one minor squabble, over toppings.

Mostly, the kids followed Draco around, asking him questions about quidditch. Harry'd expected it from Scorpius, of course, and maybe a little bit from Lily, but not from his sons. Somehow he'd thought the old rivalry would prevail, but apparently any instinctive hatred Pottters and Weasleys might have had was not strong enough to prevail in the face of a pro quidditch player.

Ron had nearly had a fit when Albie had sorted Slytherin. Harry tried to imagine explaining Lily's crush on Scorpius, Albie's friendship with him, and James's hero-worship of Draco. More surprising still, Draco bore the whole thing with cheerful resignation.

Harry could hear them now, in the kitchen getting out the plates. “Did you always want to play quidditch?”, James was asking.

“Of course,” Draco answered. “What seventeen year-old boy doesn't? But if it hadn't been for the war, I would have done an apprenticeship and gotten a job, like everyone else. The Hornets were terrible back then-- worse than the Cannons now-- but if there hadn't been such a shortage of players I'd never have gotten even a tryout.”

If half the Hornets first-string players hadn't been killed by Snatchers during the war, Harry thought. It was an ill wind indeed that did the Malfoys no good.

A question from James, that Harry missed. Draco laughed. “It's vanishingly rare, these days, for a British player to be recruited straight out of Hogwarts. Your best bet, if your grades are good, is to go to a university and play on their team. If you're good enough, you'll get your tryout, and if you aren't, at least you'll have a degree to fall back on.”

It wasn't what James wanted to hear, but Harry was grateful to Draco for saying it. He wanted more for clever Jamie than the grinding uncertainty of professional quidditch. But he knew that if, in four years time, Scorpius wanted a tryout, Draco would move heaven and earth to get him one. Then again, Scorpius was the son and grandson of notorious Death Eaters; quidditch might be the best chance he had.

The doorbell went, and all four children dived for it. They weren't as ignorant of wizarding culture as Draco or Ginny had been at that age, but pizza delivery was still a novelty. Doorbells were still a novelty. James won, by virtue of having the longest legs, and wrenched the door open without checking to see who was on the other side.

That was something Harry had given them, something he could be proud of. These were the children of peace, raised in a world where Hogwarts Houses were only archaic tradition and monsters never rang the doorbell. He watched James paying the delivery girl while the younger boys juggled the pizzas.

“Please tell me we were never that young,” Draco said from behind him, leaning on Harry.

“You were,” Harry told him, “because I can remember when you looked exactly like Scorpius.”

“Jack, please.” Draco snorted. “What a ridiculous name.”

“Are you going to let him change it?”

“It's his name, not mine. Besides, his mother chose it. She can fight with him about it.”

“Oh,” Harry said, and Draco knew him well enough to read more into it.

“Are you sure you're up for taking all of them to the game, Potter? I can always tell them I couldn't get tickets.”

Harry wasn't really up for a quidditch game in December, but if Draco was being a good sport, he could hardly do less. And any attempt to change things was only going to mean a battle with James.

“It's fine,” he said. “Seriously. Come on, we'd better get some pizza before the kids finish it off.”

Draco kissed the back of his neck and let him go. “You're right about that.”

There was a mild squabble between Albie and Lily over what to watch on television after dinner, and then the kids abruptly subsided and went to bed quietly. Harry and Draco went, too, even though it was barely ten o'clock. 

“They're good kids,” Draco said, when they were safely in the bedroom with the door closed.

“They aren't really. But I love them anyway.”

“Well, mine is good, anyway. Dear little-- Jack. He's first in his class, you know, not that horrid red-haired Granger child.”

“Rose is my goddaughter,” Harry pointed out. 

“Yes, well, Scorpius-- Jack-- is your stepson. Blood is thicker than water, Potter.”

It was the kind of thing Draco usually said when he was trying to drive Ron mad. It nearly always worked, too, especially if Harry laughed. And tonight he did laugh, before he slid a hand under the sheets and inside Draco's pajamas.

Draco laughed too, and whispered in Harry's ear. “We'll have to be dreadfully quiet. Otherwise the children will be scarred for life.”

“You're the loud one,” Harry pointed out, untruthfully, before the rest of him slid under the sheets, too.

Draco left early for the game, in a bitchy mood as usual. Harry made sure the kids were up and warmly dressed and served them pancakes for breakfast.

“Maybe you should get Mummy's recipe,” James said nastily when they came out lumpy. “She even has a spell to make them shapes.

It was never what he said so much as how he said it. Harry put plates in front of the others. James got a bowl and Draco's box of Shredded Wheat, chosen because it was low calorie and tasted like parchment. “Milk's in the fridge,” he said blandly. “I'm sure when you go to see Mummy on Boxing Day, she can make you much better pancakes, so don't force yourself to eat mine.”

The other children kept their heads down and ate quietly, and Harry felt a little guilty. He knew Albie and Lily hated when he and James argued. At least Scorpius was reading what looked like an Arithmancy book and didn't seem to have noticed. Maybe he expected the Potters to behave like animals.

The senior Malfoys came by at ten, and Harry watched bemusedly as Narcissa kissed Scorpius's cheek and Lucius clapped him on the shoulder. The Malfoys acting domestic always made him think of wolves at a dinner party-- and yet, even wolves loved their children, their grandchildren. It shouldn't seem unnatural.

They sat in the players' section at the game, which Harry's kids, at least, loved. Harry had Albie on one side of him and Narcissa Malfoy on the other. Thankfully Albie was the least quidditch-mad of the lot, and spent most of the game texting his cousin Rose, who had stayed home with her mother. 

This meant that Harry had to talk to Narcissa, which was always awkward. Unlike Lucius, who was ridiculously polite in order to cover up his intense hatred of Harry, Narcissa seemed to actually mean to be kind. “Draco tells me you two have been terribly busy getting things ready for the holiday,” she said now.

Harry nodded, but his focus was on Lily and James, sitting between Lucius and Scorpius Malfoy further down the row. He could see that James was torturing Lily somehow, though he couldn't make out the details. Lucius's head turned in that direction, and whatever he said must have been effective; the two combatants dropped back into their seats. 

Harry decided to pretend he'd missed the whole thing. “Yeah-- getting things ready for the kids, and then work always seems to get a bit mad this time of year, and Draco's been starting every game--.”

“And of course there is this ridiculous business with Brendan Lynch,” Narcissa said, and Harry started.

“I, yeah,” he agreed. “That. It was an accident, he knows that, but--.”

“Good,” Narcissa said, and patted Harry's hand reassuringly. “I'll take care of everything. I'm so glad we agree.”

On what, Harry wasn't entirely sure, but before he could ask, Lily came down the aisle and demanded a hot dog. He was waiting in line with her when the crowd roared. Two hours of sitting in freezing stands, watching a game so dull it would bore a hippogriff to death, and he'd missed Draco's big moment. At least if everything was over, they'd be able to go home, though.

By the time he and Lily staggered back to their seats, waited down with hot dogs and Cokes and pumpkin juices for the boys, the crowd had begun to thin. Cornwall's side was almost empty, which meant that Draco had caught the Snitch and the Cannons had won. The kids were ecstatic, the boys relating Draco's catch with the kind of detail sportscasters could only wish to achieve, and Lily nearly in tears that she'd missed it. Harry moved to sit between her and James, hoping to keep the peace as long as possible.

“They'll be seeded for the League Cup, anyway,” Scorpius said with satisfaction. He was one of those depressingly adult kids that Harry found incomprehensible, but at least when he was talking about quidditch he seemed halfway normal. 

“Yes,” his grandmother agreed, her voice carrying over Lily's squealing. It had surprised Harry, finding out that of two senior Malfoys, Narcissa was far more interested-- and more competitive-- about Draco's chances. “And with Brendan Lynch out, your father has an outside shot at a spot on the European Championships team.”

“The female of the species is always more ruthless,” Draco had said, when Harry remarked on it. “Generations of Black women have eaten their rivals in order to protect their offspring, you know. You've met my Aunties.” During the war, Harry had thought Bellatrix was the most terrifying of the Black sisters, but Narcissa had the instincts of a top Seeker coach or a jungle cat, and he'd once seen Andromeda reduce a waiter to tears because her pumpkin juice and vodka wasn't strong enough.

Draco came out on the field, wearing the shirt he'd been so ratty about finding that morning, and waved to the kids before starting an interview with _International Quidditch_.” Harry slid down further in his seat and tried not think about the thousand things he still needed to do.

They were home by three, which admittedly wasn't bad, but by then the kids were hungry again and Draco was clearly exhausted. Harry made sandwiches and weak coffee for tea, and chased them all out of the kitchen while he did the dishes and spelled pancake batter off the counter. It was hard not to feel a little like a martyr, especially when he finally finished and came out to find everyone else asleep in front of the television.

It was worse the next morning, when he woke up to find the flat entirely empty. “Took the kids running,” Draco's note read. Ordinarily Harry could hardly get them out of bed. They like Draco better than me, he thought, and was ashamed of himself. He wanted them to like Draco-- needed them to if they were going to be a family. But he wanted them to have to work at it.

Harry had started the coffee and was cooking bacon for breakfast sandwiches by the time the door opened and everyone spilled in, flushed and sweaty and entirely too cheerful for kids who'd been dragged out of bed and forced to exercise. Draco came over and filched bacon from the pan, dropping his chin onto Harry's shoulder in greeting. “Hey, you,” he said. “I thought maybe you could use a chance to sleep in.”

“I would have come with you,” Harry protested, even though the last thing he would have wanted on a dark, wet December morning was to get up and jog.

“My bad, then,” Draco said, but it was clear from his tone that he thought Harry was being ridiculous. “So what do you say we split up and take the kids shopping this morning?”

“Can I come with you, Mr. Malfoy?”, James asked before Harry could answer.

Harry set the spatula down, praying for patience. “I don't think--.”

“No,” Draco said pleasantly. “You go with your dad. We'll meet up for lunch and switch children so that you lot can buy your dad a present and Jack can buy me one.”

James opened his mouth to protest and clearly thought better of it. “Okay.”

Harry and Draco were behind the counter; the kids were still by the couch. Harry risked touching Draco's hip where he was fairly sure they couldn't see. They'd agreed to keep things clean while they were here, but as Draco had just prevented murder a grope probably wasn't over the line. At his touch, Draco turned and smiled, the tiny, private smile he kept just for Harry.

By the time lunch was over, though, he was back to murder, or at least child abuse. He didn't care if James liked Draco better, so long as Draco managed to lose him in the Christmas Eve crowds. Harry looked down at quiet, polite Scorpius, and asked, “Do you have any ideas for your dad, Jack?”

“Yeah,” Scorpius said. “There's a book at Flourish and Botts'. It'll take ninety seconds, even with all the people.” 

Harry recognized the look on his face. He'd thought Scorpius looked like Draco, but now the chin was pure Lucius and something about the set of his mouth made Harry think of Wallburga Black. He'd thought things had been going unnaturally well.

“My father is in love with you,” Scorpius said. “But he's been in love before. He'll get over it, if he has to.”

“He won't have to--.”

“Won't he? He''ll give you up, if I want him to. He loves you, but I'm his son. He'll believe me before he believes you.”

It was true. Of course it was true. It was true for Harry as well. “What are you saying?” he asked, because Scorpius was every inch a Slytherin, and if he was making a threat it was one he'd thought out carefully.

“Don't worry,” Scorpius said, as calmly as Lucius Malfoy had said that he'd arranged to have Sergei Ivanovitch pushed under a bus, as calmly as Narcissa had told Lord Voldemort that Harry was dead at the Battle of Hogwarts. “If you're good, you'll never have to worry. All I want is for Dad to be happy.”

“That's all I want, too,” Harry agreed, standing up to go. He wasn't going to be threatened by a fourteen year old.

“Good,” Scorpius smiled. “The book I have picked out for him is awesome.”

That night they had Christmas Eve dinner with the Granger-Weasleys. After they'd eaten Harry and Ron sprawled on the couch in front of the t.v., leaving Draco and Hermione to clear up while the kids played Exploding Snap.

“Merlin wept, the Malfoys breed true,” Ron said, watching Scorpius trounce Hugo and then gloat over it.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, thinking of that afternoon. James elbowed Lily, and Albie and Rose stepped in to pull them apart. “I'm afraid they aren't the only ones, though. I'm starting to wonder if James isn't living up to my father's name.”

“I'm sure it's just a phase,” Ron said comfortingly. “At least that's what Hermione always says about Hugo.”

Hugo still slept in his parents' bed at nine, and at Andromeda's New Years' party last year Harry'd caught him eating Fancy Feast from the cat's bowl. But no good ever came of criticizing other people's kids. “I wouldn't swap them for anything, you know, even Jamie on his worst day,” he said instead, “but sometimes I wonder, if it hadn't been for the war, where we'd be.”

“Yeah. Well, Malfoy wouldn't be playing pro quidditch, that's for sure. You think you'd still be-- you know?”

It was something they never really talked about, Harry's being gay, Harry fucking their worst enemy from school. Harry thought again of Scorpius's sneer that afternoon, as he threatened an ex-Auror twenty-five years his senior. Draco had been just as bloody-minded at that age. “I don't know,” he said honestly. “I never saw it coming, not until after Ginny left. I just thought maybe there was something I was missing, I guess. Like everyone else grew up and somehow I didn't. Ginny and I weren't unhappy. We just weren't real.”

“Some days I think we're all pretending.” Ron's smile was tired, but his eyes were the same as they'd been at seventeen. “We're all just fucked up kids underneath, Harry.”

Draco had stopped in the kitchen doorway, turned back to talk to Hermione. The hardness of his body under his thin jumper, the faint lines at his mouth, the way his fine blond hair fell forward over his face-- mine, Harry thought, with that faint, pleasant surprise the realization always engendered. “Maybe there are worse things to be,” he said. “Maybe we ended up right where we were supposed to be, even with the war.”

Draco came over and sat next to him then, touching the back of Harry's hand as he did so. Harry felt the warm weight of him against his hip, and something in his face must have changed because Ron smiled, just a little, like he was seeing something he hadn't understood before.

On Christmas morning they opened presents. It was different than it had been the last Christmas Harry'd spent with the kids, when he and Ginny had still been together. Lily still ripped into her presents, but James and even Albie were slower, more grown up about the whole thing. Scorpius, of course, was ridiculously polite, although now that Harry was looking for it he felt like there was an edge to everything the kid said.

He'd been surprised by Draco's presents for Scorpius. Books, clothes, quidditch gear-- none of it particularly exciting or expensive. No racing brooms, or mini computers. But there hadn't been any way he could think of to ask about it. Draco was funny when it came to money. He paid most of the upkeep on Malfoy Manor, and he helped his parents and he was practically Parkinson's only client, but he didn't want Harry's help, and Harry had learned not to offer. They split things down the middle, or they didn't buy them.

His presents for his own kids and for Scorpius and Draco seemed a little over the top by comparison. But even though everyone seemed to like what they'd gotten, Harry noticed that they were at least as enthusiastic at getting to choose things from the huge box of Cannons merchandise and free gifts Draco dragged out.

Ron had a theory that every kid had two sets of grandparents, the cool ones like the Weasleys who let you do what you liked and the dull ones like Hermione's parents who gave electric toothbrushes as gifts. Christ, Harry thought, depressed, I've become a seventy year old dentist.

After the presents and breakfast, they went to the park and played pickup quidditch. He and Draco played keepers, while the kids filled in the other positions. James and Scorpius were shockingly good for kids, and Lily had improved a lot. Albie still ducked far too often, though. It felt good, being on a broom. Harry hadn't flown much since he'd retired from active duty, and he'd almost forgotten how much he loved it. The day was beautiful, cold and sunny and crisp, and for a moment he was entirely happy.

Three days after Christmas, Brendan Lynch died quietly in hospital. By then Harry's kids had gone on to Ginny, which was lucky, since it shook Draco badly. It was all over the papers again, of course; the tragedy and Draco's part in it, both. They never quite blamed him, except in the tabs, which made a great deal of Lynch's promise as a Seeker and Draco's supposed jealousy. Harry couldn't help feeling glad it was at least over.

At the funeral Aidan Lynch made a point of coming over to shake Draco's hand. “You were my brother's inspiration, man,” he said. “He loved to watch you play. He'd have hated missing out on the season you're having.”

Draco's face didn't change. If Harry hadn't known him so well, he wouldn't have realized how deeply the words affected him. Draco'd never been any good at showing anything positive. “I'd have hated playing against him. He was a hell of a Seeker.”

Afterward, in the car on the way home from the Floo station, he leaned against Harry, shivering a little. “He was so young,” he said. “Barely older than Scorpius. Barely older than we were during the war. What a fucking waste.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, thinking suddenly of Narcissa patting his hand at the Nixies game, saying that she'd take care of things. This couldn't have been what she'd meant, surely. If he'd been as young as Brendan Lynch he'd have been furious, but he was a father himself now, and he thought that even if she'd had something to do with it-- and she couldn't have, surely-- maybe it was for the best. At least now the Lynches might find some kind of peace. At least now Draco might.

Better, definitely, not to mention any of it to Draco. “Let's let Scorpius spend the night with his grandparents,” he said instead. “I think we need a night off.”

“Sounds good,” Draco said. “Let's get absolutely shitfaced. I'll call Pansy and Greg.”

Harry'd had something sexier in mind, but stopped himself from saying so just in time. “Good idea. I'll text Ron and Hermione.”

Since that first awkward time at the Cat, when Harry and Draco's relationship had been the worst-kept secret in Britain, the six of them had reached a tentative state of truce. Ron and Draco hated one another, and Hermione and Pansy were politely nasty, but their nights out had a certain charm. There were so few of them left who really remembered the war, they almost couldn't afford to be enemies.

“Was the funeral very crowded?”, Hermione asked, when they were all sitting around the table at the Three-Legged Crup.

“Yeah,” Draco said. “Huge. Half the quidditch players in Britain, looked like.” 

It had been. All of them in flashy dress robes and dark glasses, and most of them wearing British Open rings. Harry'd found himself in the Gents' with a half a dozen men bigger through the shoulder than Greg, even, and had wondered if he'd ever make it out. 

“It was nice, I thought,” Goyle said now. “Show of respect for Aidan and his mum, and all.”

It was the sort of conversation-killer he always came up with. Harry had never understood how he did it. Draco got up abruptly. “I'll get the next round.” 

 

When he came back, it was with a bottle of vodka and a stack of shot glasses. Pansy opened her mouth as he set them out, caught Draco's eye, and shrugged and took a glass. They had a private language Harry wasn't privy to, but he thought she was asking what he was doing. He'd never seen Draco have more than the occasional pint or glass of wine, and rarely even that much during the season.

Still, Harry took the glass Draco handed him, and drank to Brendan Lynch, and to the Cannons' chances in the League Final and England's chances in the World Cup. Hermione rolled her eyes at him, and he couldn't help smiling, but none of the others noticed. 

As the evening wore on, he and Hermione and surprisingly, Goyle, drank less and less. Pansy, who got tipsy on half a beer, was nearly in Goyle's lap, but Ron and Draco were still hard at it, though they'd given up diagramming quidditch plays with bar nuts and started playing Truth. 

Harry could still remember the first time they'd played, at Hogwarts. “You mean Truth or Dare?” Hermione had asked, puzzled, and Lavender had smirked at her. 

“Truths are much more interesting than dares,” she had said. Then it had only been one more difference between the two worlds; now Harry wondered how much it had to do with being the second generation raised in the middle of a civil war. 

No matter how long Harry spent in this world he'd never get past the way you could buy veritaserum in a bar. It must have been handy, for their parents-- for those in the Order and those who were Death Eaters. Now it was just a drinking game, one he was so used to that tonight it hadn't even occurred to him what a bad idea it would be until after they'd drunk it.

“Weasley,” Draco said, staring fixedly at Ron. “If you had to, with one of your siblings, which--.”

“Charlie,” Ron interrupted.

“You didn't let me finish the question!”

“Doesn't matter. I answered it. My turn. Harry, do you ever worry that Malfoy will cheat on you the way he cheated on his ex-wife?”

“No,” Harry answered, and it came out so easily that Draco smirked. “Greg, if you hadn't played quidditch, what would you like to have done for a job?”

Goyle looked surprised to be remembered. “Dunno,” he said slowly. “Malfoy and Vince Crabbe and I always planned on being Aurors after we finished school, but the only thing I was ever much good at was Charms.” He sighed, and Pansy touched his hand, her fingers tiny next to his big, scarred knuckles. “Draco. Would you ever have come out, if you hadn't had to?”

“No.” 

The finality with which he said it shocked Harry. He thought, by the way she suddenly sat up straighter, that it had shocked Pansy, too.  
Draco yawned. “I knew Serge would fuck off if I did,” he said. “I knew it would ruin my marriage and hurt my kid. I didn't know half my teammates would be afraid to shower with me because I might give them AIDS and the other half would be afraid even to be in the locker room with me in case I check out their bodies, okay, but if I had that wouldn't have been a huge selling point either.”

“Half your teammates are female, you drama queen,” Pansy pointed out. “Anyway, it got you Potter, so all's well that ends well.” She even smiled at Harry, sweet and very, very drunk.

“It got me Harry,” Draco agreed. “Who I dragged out of the closet as well.”

“I always meant to come out eventually,” Harry said quietly, wishing they were having this conversation alone and sober. “Draco, do they really--.”

“My turn to ask the question,” Draco cut in. “Let's see. Weasley, how much did you pay the Hornets' GM to leak the story?”

Harry hadn't known, not until he saw Ron's face. But he saw, looking around, that he was the only one. 

“Eight hundred galleons,” Ron said. “He would have done it for free, though. His sister was raped by Death Eaters during the war. So, Malfoy, what's the worst thing you've ever done?”

“That's enough.” Harry could always count on Hermione to be a grownup, at least. “Get your coat, Ronald. It's time to go.”

“Yeah, Ronald,” Draco drawled.

“Not until he answers the question.”

Draco shrugged. “Were you thinking it was Lynch? Because I knew how dangerous that dive was. I wrecked my shoulder the first time I did it, and that was just in practice. Or maybe sleeping with Sergei while I was married to Astoria? Or letting Blaise take those pictures. Here's a tip, Weasley, when you're doing it with brother Charlie-- if he says he wants pictures that are just for him and beautiful and special, he's probably going to shop them to the tabs. That's what boys do.” He sounded the way Harry remembered him at seventeen. Vicious. Harry'd forgotten he had it in him. “Malcolm. That's the worst thing I ever did. I knew he was in love with me, and I slept with him so he'd take the Mark, and eventually he swallowed six or eight doses of Dreamless Sleep to forget about it.”

Ron got up and walked out. After a moment, Hermione stood up, too, gathering her purse and both their winter coats. “I'm sorry,” she said, mostly to Harry. “You know how he gets.”

“You'll be able to manage?,” Harry asked, moving around the table to kiss her cheek.

By the time he turned around again, Goyle and Pansy were ready to go, too, and Draco was checking his texts and pretending everything was fine. “Goodnight,” Harry said, watching Goyle half carry Pansy out. He looked pissed and she looked sick, which Harry thought was probably understandable given the way the night had gone.

“You coming?”, he asked, and Draco spun around in his chair.

“I wasn't planning on spending the night here,” he said, but Harry thought there was something like relief in the belligerent set of his chin. 

“I love you,” he said. He was tired, a little drunk, still feeling the veritaserum; it was still true.

“Maybe you shouldn't,” Draco answered, putting on his coat, and Harry didn't ask what he meant. They'd had enough truth for one night.


	2. Two

Draco got up ridiculously early the next morning and left for practice before Harry was out of bed. He didn't seem to be hungover, which was unfair, but Harry was too worried too be jealous. He ducked out of work after only an hour and picked up a caramel latte for Hermione on the way to Unspeakable headquarters.

Hermione was elbow deep in piles of parchment when he came in, but she smiled distractedly at him and took the coffee. 

“I think my boyfriend's lost his mind,” Harry said, trying not to look at the crawling letters of the classified documents on the nearest pile. 

“He's been mad for years, really,” Hermione answered absently, scrawling notes on the parchment. “You knew that when you started.”

Harry sighed. “So you don't think he's having a breakdown?”

“I think he's an insecure asshole, same as he's always been,” Hermione said. “I should know, my husband is another. Draco clearly took Lynch's death very hard, that's all. Greg texted me this morning-- he said Draco is always like this when he drinks, and we shouldn't take it personally.”

“Goyle texted you? Greg Goyle has your number?”

To his shock, Hermione blushed a little. “I'm allowed to have friends, Harry.”

Ten years ago, Harry would have blurted out, “Does Ron know?”, and there would have been a blazing row that went on for weeks. Bureaucracy had taught him discretion, anyway; he smiled and Hermione punched him lightly in the arm.

“Did you know?”, he asked instead. “That Ron was the one who leaked that story?”

“I'm an Unspeakable,” Hermione said. “I knew, although it wasn't Ron who told me, and we've never discussed it. It was a year and more before the two of you got together, you know. And if it's any comfort, I think it was probably only five percent homophobia and ninety-five percent Malfoy-phobia.”

“It isn't really any comfort.”

“They would have hated each other no matter what. If you had never gone to Hogwarts, if there had never been a war. It was practically predestined.”

“I still don't have to like it,” Harry said plaintively. 

“I know. Have you got any disasters I can actually solve? Because I have mountains of paperwork, and I promised Rose and Hugo I'd be home on time tonight.”

“I think my mother-in-law might have murdered Brendan Lynch,” Harry mumbled.

Hermione set her coffee down very carefully and looked at him. “If you have any evidence of that,” she said, her voice perfectly level, “you of all people should know where to report it. If you haven't, I strongly suggest never mentioning it again, because nothing will ruin your relationship with Draco more quickly than making an accusation like that about your mother-in-law.”

Harry shook his head. “No evidence. Just a feeling. And I promise never to bring it up again.”

“Good. I'll swap you Narcissa Malfoy for Molly Weasley, if you like.”

“Molly Weasley likes me,” Harry pointed out. “It's only you she doesn't like. You and Ginny. And Fleur.”

“Go away,” Hermione said, and put her tongue out at him.

When Harry got home that evening, Draco and Scorpius were in the kitchen grilling steaks. Harry leaned on the counter, watching them. Draco looked tired, and he moved like his shoulder was bothering him. 

“Tough practice?”, Harry asked, hoping he sounded sympathetic and not gloating. 

Draco abandoned the grill and moved to join him. “Something like that,” he admitted, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Scorpius wasn't paying attention. “No more than I deserved, right?” He looked down at the stacked plates, as if he were afraid to see Harry's face.

“Whatever,” Harry said, because he knew Draco had been present for Hermione's lecture on the overuse of the word and he wanted not to have this conversation, especially in front of the kid. “Did you marinate those?”

Draco let himself be distracted. “I did, indeed. Do you want salad?” 

“No,” Harry answered, honestly. “Aren't there any potatoes?”

But after dinner, after Scorpius was curled up on the couch with his Ancient Runes essay, Draco shut the bedroom door behind them and Harry knew they were going to have to talk about it, or fuck and not talk about it, or not fuck and not talk about it, which hadn't worked during Harry's marriage.

“I'm an asshole,” Draco said finally. “I know that.” It wasn't the same as I'm sorry, although Harry knew he meant it to be; Draco didn't seem to have it in him to apologize. Or, possibly, he'd never done anything to Harry that he was sorry for.

“You did it on purpose. That's what bothers me. Not the asshole part-- I knew that all along.”

“I did what on purpose? You mean Lynch? I didn't intend for him to follow me, if that's what you mean. I certainly didn't plan on his diving head first into the pitch--.”

“Not Lynch,” Harry interrupted. “I know as well as you and probably better, accidents happen. Last night, is what I mean, with the stupid game. You set Ron up, you got him drunk enough to play, you pushed him until he wanted to say it.”

“Pretty much,” Draco agreed. “I guess it wouldn't help to point out that he's been wanting to say it a long time? That half the fun of doing it is in having me know that he did it? No?” He turned a little away from Harry, and started to unbutton his shirt.

Talking _and_ fucking then. How novel. “It's not really the point,” Harry said. “I'm sorry Ron did that to you, yeah. It was a dick move. But he's my best friend. We see him pretty much every week. If you wanted to talk about it, why didn't you just--.” He already knew why, though. If Draco had said to him, “I think your best mate Ron Weasley is the one who outed me and wrecked my life,” he'd have been appalled. At Draco, who had never made much of an effort to get along with Ron, who was clever and vindictive and amoral, and who had not been Harry's best friend since they were eleven.

“It's not like I was saving it for a special occasion,” Draco said, taking his shirt off and dropping it on the floor. “It just happened. I didn't really think about it beforehand or anything.” 

“Before you went up to get the drinks and saw the veritaserum behind the bar,” Harry prompted.

Draco smiled a little. “Let's not kid ourselves. I'd been fucking dreaming of doing it for years. I just didn't plan to actually do it, not until I got up to the bar and saw the veritaserum.” 

He'd stopped undressing. “Okay,” Harry said.

“Okay?”, Draco repeated suspiciously.

“Take your pants off and fuck me, asshole.”

Draco laughed and pulled Harry down onto the bed. “I hope the soundproofing charm holds. That's my kid out there being traumatized if it doesn't.”

Your kid the sociopath, Harry thought, but he didn't want to fight about that, too. Draco had him out of his clothes so fast it might have been magic, his mouth warm and wet as he licked his way from Harry's throat to his nipples. 

Draco was good. And on nights like this, when they had been fighting--. Harry closed his eyes and gave in to it, the mouth on his cock and the slickness of fingers sliding into him. He let Draco roll him over so that he was on his stomach, the sheet cool against his cheek, let Draco press into him with slow and careful strokes.

They didn't do this much, Draco fucking Harry. Draco never initiated it, and Harry knew he thought Harry didn't really like it, that he only wanted it after they fought as some kind of appeasement. That Harry lay under him, quiet and pliant, barely even rocking his hips enough to rub himself against the sheet, because he wanted it over with and was too polite to say so.

The truth was, Harry had never really thought about what it might be like, all those long lonely years lying in bed next to Ginny, knowing something was wrong with their marriage and not brave enough to try and change things. He hadn't even thought about it after she left, after he knew it wasn't Ginny that was wrong. Even afterward, when he was suddenly someone else, someone who dreamed about men and not women, he never dreamed about being the one fucked. 

The truth was that even though he had never said so, had led Draco to believe that the opposite was true, there was something lovely about giving up so much control. Being fucked made him feel vulnerable, cared for, young. The truth was, Harry liked it so much he hated it.  
He could have moved under Draco, lifted his hips, tightened around Draco's cock; he could have begged for it, but he hadn't been someone who begged in a long time, not since he'd watched Cedric Diggory die. He couldn't go back, not even for Draco.

“Harry,” Draco whispered, his breath warm against Harry's shoulder, “oh, Merlin, Harry.” Harry felt him come, and he could have gone with him. It wouldn't have taken much, not tonight. Instead he slid gently out from under Draco and lay quietly beside him, until Draco had caught his breath and moved to bring him off with his mouth and his fingers.

Afterward, when they were both finished and the worst of the mess had been charmed away, Draco curled against Harry, warm and half asleep, and Harry leaned into him and wondered what he'd have to do to make this last forever. Talk to Ron and make sure he packed it in, clearly. And there had to be some way to sort out a job for Draco-- Hogwarts owed Harry that much, surely, or maybe Draco'd rather coach, or even go back to university, which was something Harry should talk to Hermione about--.

They fell asleep with the lights on, again, the alarm unset, and in the morning there was the usual mad rush as Harry had to get to work, and Scorpius couldn't find half of his things and Draco had to run the washing machine before he could pack for the train. Then that night Pansy called, triumphant. The British team wanted Draco for a test match in South Africa, but he'd have to leave the next morning-- somehow, once again, there wasn't time to talk about anything important.

Still, Harry felt buoyed up by what had, by any count, been rather lovely sex, so much so that he didn't mind that the next day was Friday and the weekend was going to be dreary and lonely with Draco gone. He was in his office sorting through his post when Penelope Clearwater barged in. 

“Lucius Malfoy is here!”, she said with a squeak not at all suited to a department head. “He hasn't been to the Ministry in ages, not since he was fired after the war!”

“Christ,” Harry said, his mind sorting through possible disasters. The one advantage to going public about his relationship with Draco was that he'd been listed as Draco's next-of-kin; he was supposed to be the first one notified if something happened, which meant that if something had, it probably wasn't to Draco.

“Mr. Lucius Malfoy is here to see you,” his secretary said from the doorway, clearing his throat portentously, “shall I show him in?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, watching Penny rush out. He shoved his messages into a drawer and stood up as Lucius came in.

“Sit down, Potter,” the other man drawled. “This isn't a coup.”

Not Draco, then, or Scorpius or Narcissa. “What--.”

Lucius's mouth tightened. All at once he looked tired, older, as if coming into the Ministry again had taken all of his energy. “It's your godson, I'm afraid. Theodore.”

Teddy. Harry sat down heavily.

“A training accident, somewhere up north,” Lucius was saying. “Half a dozen of them-- some sort of explosion-- Adromeda wanted you to come, if you'd like.”

Harry'd heard only a third of it. “Of course,” he said automatically. “Whatever I can do for her.”

They drove away from London in a Bentley Harry hadn't known Lucius possessed. “They've closed all the Floos and blocked non- emergency apparition,” Lucius explained, pulling the car out of a spot it should never have fit into. 

When they stopped for petrol Harry couldn't help flipping through the dash. The Bentley's papers were years out of date and it was registered to Rabastan Lestrange. Harry shut the compartment quickly when Lucius came out, carrying the coffees. 

“Here,” Lucius said, and Harry took his, dubious. He felt light- headed, shaky, as if he, not Teddy, had been the one in an explosion. He couldn't remember leaving work, couldn't remember if he had the key to his flat or his mobile or even his cloak. His wand was in the pocket of his robes, at least. He took a sip of his coffee. It was too sweet, and under that it tasted burned, but at least it grounded him a little.

Lucius's mobile rang, and he answered it, muscling the big car through traffic one-handed and Seeker smooth. Harry looked out the window, not listening. Maybe he was being kidnapped, or taken to the country to be shot and buried in an unmarked grave-- maybe Teddy wasn't really dead. He wasn't sure which he wanted to be true.

They got off the motorway at Andromeda's exit, and even the wheels of the car seemed to say, “Dead, gone, lost,” as they covered the ground. At the entrance to Andromeda's subdivision, Lucius pulled off and parked.

“That was a friend, at the Aurors' College,” he said, and Harry stared blankly. “That rang me, Potter-- never mind. The point is, it looks as if the whole thing was a stupid accident, not a terrorist attack after all. They Apparated in in two groups, and they landed more or less on top of one another.” He looked over at Harry, and for once his sea- grey eyes were almost kind. “I saw it happen once, a long time ago. The best that could be said for it was that it was over very quickly.”

Harry was going to cry in front of Lucius Malfoy, if Lucius didn't stop. “Teddy was the most senior Auror in the group, and in charge of the exercise,” he said, as Harry blinked and gasped and sniffled. “They will blame him, and the press--.”

“They won't,” Harry said. His voice came out hoarse and choked, but understandable. “They won't dare.”

“Sure,” Lucius said politely, and put the car in gear. Even through his tears Harry could see the way the corner of his mouth turned up, not quite a smile; he suddenly missed Draco's familiar smirk desperately.

To Harry's surprise, Andromeda answered the door herself, dry-eyed and tidily dressed in jeans and a dark sweater. At first glance, she didn't look like a woman who had lost her only grandson, but when Harry drew her close and hugged her, she felt frail in his arms, diminished: she had buried almost everyone she had ever loved, in the war and the months after, and now to lose Teddy, too--.

He was crying again, and Andromeda patted his shoulder gently. “Miss Parkinson has texted me that she will notify Draco and take care of the arrangements,” she said. “Come in, Harry, and have a drink.”

“It's only eleven o'clock,” Harry protested automatically. 

“Nonsense,” Narcissa said briskly, materializing on his other side. “It's medicinal, after all.”

Harry found himself at Andromeda's kitchen table, drinking coffee heavily laced with brandy and watching Lucius Malfoy make toasted cheese sandwiches over a burner. On the refrigerator Teddy waved cheerfully to him from a photograph Harry'd never seen-- Teddy was quite young in it, probably too young to have started at Hogwarts, and Draco wore Hornets gear and looked barely old enough to have finished.

Harry had never thought they were at all alike, not for first cousins. Draco looked like a Malfoy, and Teddy looked like Remus; but he thought now that he could see something of Sirius in both of them. “Are the all the Blacks cursed?”, he asked, and Lucius dropped the sandwich he was floating onto the flame.

“Only the disinherited ones,” Andromeda said after a moment. “Narcissa and Draco and Scorpius are quite as safe as any other witches and wizards. Aunt Wallburga lived to be quite old, you know, and died of perfectly natural causes.”

Once it would have made Harry terribly angry, the injustice and the waste of it. Now he only felt tired, and resigned. 

“It isn't considered polite to refer to it,” Narcissa said repressively, “especially as it can't be reversed.”

“Oh,” Harry said, and put his head down on the table. “I'll never understand all the rules, not if I live to be older than Dumbledore.”

Lucius snorted, and a plate materialized on the placemat beside Harry's cheek. Despite its immolation, the sandwich look fantastic, which was cheering. “The idea,” Lucius said, “is to be rich enough or powerful enough or clever enough that the rules don't matter; you meet two of those criteria.”

“Thank you,” Harry said, and ate his sandwich and let Narcissa put him to bed in Andromeda's spare bedroom. Their brand of parenting was as terrifying as Mrs. Weasley's, and almost as comforting. Harry fell asleep trying to imagine what it would be like to have grown up with the Malfoys as parents and whether, in light of his relationship with Draco, that meant he was fantasizing about incest.

They had put something in his toasted cheese-- it was early morning when Harry woke, and the house was dark and quiet. Harry was starving. He used the bathroom and splashed water on his face, then padded through the house to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator without putting on the light or using a Lumos charm, and by its dim light he saw Narcissa sitting at the table, teacup in hand.

Feeling less like a retired auror and more like a naughty schoolboy, he closed the door carefully and Narcissa's wand flared to light the room. For a moment, the grief on her face, and her beauty despite it, made his heart hurt. “What's wrong?”, he asked.

She shook her head, and her face was peaceful again. “Only Teddy,” she answered softly, “only the thing you know. The tabloids were here last night, in the street outside the house. They are going to be unkind, I'm afraid, and people--. When my sister Bellatrix died, there was talk that her Animagus form was that of a black cat, and for years after her death, people killed cats and nailed them to the gate of the Manor. It is not something I want for Andromeda.”

“I won't let them,” Harry said. “I'll stop them.”

Narcissa smiled. “Oh, Harry,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it. “If Lucius, whose family owned the _Prophet_ for generations, couldn't stop it, do you really think you can? They are looking for someone to blame, and with Teddy's family connections--.”

“His parents died heroes,” Harry protested.

“Yes,” Narcissa said, “but what have they done for him since?”

In the morning the street was full of press, legitimate and otherwise. The networks were open again. The Malfoys and Andromeda apparated to Malfoy Manor and Harry Flooed to London. He stopped at a tiny market near Ron and Hermione's house to buy a _Prophet_ and check the covers of the other papers. The Malfoys had been correct. Teddy's death had just made the deadlines for the tabs, and they had been vicious.

Harry flipped through them, half in disbelief: murderous Malfoy aunt and cousin, history of instability among the Blacks, father a werewolf, pureblood Dark Arts ritual gone wrong, a not especially incriminating photo of Lucius Malfoy with Snape, Draco's affairs with Ivanovitch and Zabini, allegations that Teddy had been involved from a very young age in a menage a trois with Harry and Draco.

There was nothing in them but trash, and in a minute he was going to be sick or burn most of wizarding London to the ground. Harry set the _Prophet_ down, carefully, and walked out. He wanted nothing more than to talk to Draco, but Draco was half a world away and probably out of signal range.

Ron answered the door. “You've seen, then,” he said, as Harry shoved by him into the house.

“Yes,” Harry answered savagely. Hugo was in the kitchen, eating a vast bowl of cereal with marshmallows in it, which would have made Harry laugh at any other time-- Hermione had been a terrible snob about organic, unprocessed food when Rose was small, and driven Ginny mad-- but just now he was far too angry. 

In the sitting room, the t.v. was blaring. Harry almost blew it up before he realized. “Is that the England game?”, he asked, suddenly distracted. Now that he thought, it had been on in the shop as well. 

“Yeah,” Ron answered sourly. “The wankers. Hope they aren't intending to play like this at the World Cup.” The score flashed up on the bottom of the screen: South Africa 1610, Great Britain 1440. 

Harry winced. “Poor Draco.”

“Yeah.” Ron looked cheered. “The game started at seven last night, so eight our time, and it's supposed to be 32 degrees there now. I bet old Malfoy's pretty miserable all right. Every time we get within range the Snitch disappears then by the time it's back they've run up two hundred on us. Anyway,” he said, turning the volume down reluctantly, “I'm really sorry about Teddy, Harry. Hermione's looked into it, and it sounds like it was a stupid accident, poor kid.” He sighed, and Harry sighed with him.

On the screen, the cameras cut to the Seekers. The South African looked angry, and Draco looked bored. He had a bruise down his face like a hand print, dark and angry; players weren't allowed to see the healers unless they left the game, and Harry knew it must not be serious or Britain would have put in a substitute. He still didn't like it.

“Back off Malfoy,” he said instead, the way he should have done a while ago. “I love him, he's staying, and you don't want to make me choose between you.”

Something flickered in Ron's face. Hurt. He was Harry's oldest friend. “I didn't mean it that way,” Harry added, even though he had. “Just-- I know I probably gave you the impression I wasn't serious about him, when I kept it a secret for so long. Maybe you even thought I was, I don't know, embarrassed because it was Draco. Well, I'm not. He's my boyfriend, you're my best friend. If you guys want to stick around, you'll work things out. For my sake.”

On screen, England scored twice in quick succession. “Yeah,” Ron said, “well. If he plays like he has this season--.”

From Ron, it was practically a fulsome apology. Harry turned away from the t.v., looking at the stack of newspapers on the floor by the sofa. “What am I going to do?”, he asked Ron. “About Teddy. It isn't fair.”

Ron shook his head. “No. But what can you do? Sue half the wizarding papers in England? You can't just wave your wand and make something like this disappear-- you of all people should know that, Harry.” 

Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his burning eyes. When he looked up, Ron's face was a pale, concerned blur, and they could have been fourteen again. But bad as things were, they had been so much worse then. He could hardly wish those days back.

“Look out, idiot--.” Harry fumbled his glasses back on, scrubbing away tears. Ron was staring at the television. “Sorry,” he explained unnecessarily, “I was talking to Mal-- Draco, just a friendly, uh, warning about that Bludger, this team plays for keeps.”

Harry'd missed the play, but there did seem to be a lot of gesticulating and shouting, only barely audible with the sound dialed down.

“Britain protesting that rough play,” the announcer said as Ron turned it back up. “But Draco Malfoy still well in control of this game. Will he selected for an unprecedented fourth shot at the British World Cup team? Remember, he was traveling Reserve back in--.”

“Huh,” Ron said. “Well, I promised Hermione I'd take the kids to the park before lunch.” He sighed. Harry sneaked a glance at his watch. It was after twelve-thirty. He thought of Hugo eating breakfast as he came in. Hermione wouldn't approve. 

“I'll stay here and watch the game,” he said. “I'll text you if anything exciting happens.”

When Ron had gone, he did watch. He hadn't seen the end of one of Draco's games since Lynch's fall, which was mostly coincidental. But he'd forgotten-- how good Draco was, how much fun he was to watch. And the South African team weren't playing like it was a friendly; neither were the young British team who might never get another chance to play for their country.

Nor Draco, who was fiercely, rabidly competitive, and still played like he was fifteen and had an enormous chip on his shoulder. In the end, Britain won, and Harry smiled as Draco and the other Seeker shook hands reluctantly. “Malfoy pwns all,” he texted Ron. 

A moment later his phone beeped. He flipped it open, expecting obscenity from Ron, but the text was from Penny Clearwater. “Wands up, but don't do anything foolish,” it read. “I'll sort everything out. No worries.” Penelope was the only person he knew, even at Justice, who texted in complete sentences with perfect punctuation. 

Harry wondered what in hell she meant. The next text was from Ron, and the one after from Pansy, with Draco's Floo time. But although he sent Penny half a dozen texts and finally called her, she never answered.

Harry went home to get the Golf, and drove it slowly to the Heathrow Floo station, trying not to remember that the last time he'd been there he'd been picking up Ted. Instead he thought of Draco, in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, sleek and satisfied as a Kneazle, and it was almost enough to make him smile.


	3. Three

By the time he got to Heathrow and parked, he was ten minutes late, and coming in to International Arrivals he realized with horror it was full of press. If they brought up the tabloid rumors, Draco was likely to go ballistic. But when he finally saw Draco, it looked like things were peaceful enough, and as he got closer Harry realized they weren't from the tabs-- they were from _Q.E.D._ and the sporting section of the _Prophet_. 

Harry'd known, of course; there had been five or six years when Draco's face had been everywhere, and Ron had complained about it pretty much nonstop. But by the time he and Draco were together that had mostly been over. People recognized Draco, and occasionally they asked for autographs, but that happened to Harry, too. This was different. 

There was easy, quiet familiarity to the way the reporters spoke to Draco, and the way he answered them, and there was a sense of muted excitement to the crowd. Harry thought of the announcer at the game, and wondered. He hadn't really protested when he'd aged out of active duty with the Aurors, but he hadn't loved it the way Draco loved quidditch. He could see why it might be almost impossible to give up.

Draco saw him and broke away from the woman with the microphone. He looked desperately tired, and the bruise on his cheek was spectacular. He hugged Harry hard, not saying anything, and waved to his fans before they walked out to the car together.

“Merlin,” he said, slumping in the passenger seat next to Harry. “That was a fucking great game.” 

Harry glanced over at him. “Yeah.”

The corner of Draco's mouth turned down. “Pan called me about Teddy,” he said. “I can't-- I can't believe--.”

“I know.” Harry took his hand off the gearshift for a moment, and touched Draco's thigh. “Christ, I know exactly what you mean.”

“How did Andromeda take it?”

“How does Andromeda take anything?”, Harry said. His eyes were filling up, again. He'd cried so much in the last twenty-four hours that they actually hurt.

“I always thought knowing it was coming would make it easier,” Draco said, slumping against the window. “But it doesn't. If he just could have given it up, lived like a Squib-- if he'd just been born a Squib--.”

“That was the curse? That he couldn't use magic?”

“That his magic would go wrong. It's blood magic. Cygnus Black cast it on all three of them-- Sirius and Regulus and Andromeda, and on all their descendants-- that their magic would betray them, as they had betrayed him. You must have noticed Andromeda never does magic. But being born a Metamorphagus like that, of course poor Ted never had a chance. I thought--,” he sighed. “I thought you knew,” he said, so softly Harry almost didn't hear. “I thought everyone knew everything about us.”

“I didn't,” Harry answered. And then, to make Draco smile: “Not everything is about you, you know.”

Draco smiled at him, all his edges gone, all his defenses down, sweet and gorgeous. “That's why I love you, Potter. You remind me of how far I've come.”

Harry wanted-- not a fuck, necessarily, but something. To talk, to lie in bed beside Draco and watch something mindless on TV, to go to dinner and hold hands somewhere no one knew them. But Draco was almost asleep by the time they got home. Harry carried his bag and got him an ice pack for his cheek, aware that he was hovering but unable to stop himself. And Draco went to sleep without even a kiss, apparently unable to stop himself, either.

When he was out Harry wandered idly through the flat, opening drawers and wardrobes and cupboards and closing them without taking anything out. Andromeda didn't use magic, and he'd never even noticed. And Tonks, and Teddy, born with magic not only in their blood but in their bodies as well, as much a part of them as oxygen. Why had Adromeda got pregnant in the first place? But she wouldn't have known. There hadn't been a Metamorphagus born in generations. And Teddy had been an accident, if a much-loved one.

Fucking Cygnus Black. He thought of Draco saying, “My father told me once there was nothing I could do that would be so terrible he wouldn't love me,” and he wondered if he would be strong enough to do the same for James, for Albie and for Lily, if it came to that some day. Pray God it never would.

He went back into the bedroom and lay down beside Draco, listening to Draco's steady breathing, not quite snoring. The streets outside their building were dark and quiet, and after a long time he slept.

When he woke it was light out, and Draco was standing in front of the mirror on the dresser, wearing only a towel, admiring the bruise on his cheek. “Hey,” he said, turning, as if he'd felt Harry's eyes on him. “We have to leave in a hour. Pansy's already texted at least twelve times this morning. “We're not to be late, and we're not to wear black, and we're not to talk to anyone we don't know, in case they're press.”

“Why can't we wear black?”, Harry asked. “They couldn't have healed that for you?”

“The last game of the regular season is Friday,” Draco said. “You know how strict the meds rules are.” He dropped his towel on the floor and flopped next to Harry. “No black,” he said, “because we don't want to be mistaken for Death Eaters. Have you got dress robes that aren't black? She said you could wear a dark suit if you haven't.”

“I can transfigure my old ones,” Harry said, yawning, “if it ruins them, so much the better.” Draco's head was on his chest, and Harry ran his fingers absently through Draco's fine blond hair. Draco was far fitter than anyone their age had any right to be, but he was losing his hair a bit, which made Harry smile. If he'd really been perfect, Harry couldn't have stood it.

“There was an owl, too. From the Ministry. You were sleeping like a rock.”

“Says the man who went to bed last night at seven.” Harry got up, reluctantly, and went into the bathroom. “Go make coffee,” he yelled through the open door. “If you want there to be any chance of us being on time.”

When he'd showered and dressed in his newly navy blue dress robes, he went out into the kitchen. Draco had made coffee, and there were pancakes browning on the stove. Harry found his letter on the counter and ripped it open without looking at the seal. It wasn't from Penny, and it wasn't Justice business, at least not the kind he'd thought. It was from Internal Affairs.

“I've been suspended indefinitely,” he said numbly, reading it, “for conduct unbecoming a Ministry official.”

“You're kidding.” Draco swung around with the spatula in his hand. “Harry--.”

“It was the tabs. That story about Teddy, that we'd had some kind of menage a trois, that he snapped because of it.”

“Okay,” Draco said, turning the burner off and pushing the pan off the heat. “Pansy will sort this. It's what she does.”

“Not with the Ministry, she doesn't,” Harry pointed out. “She hasn't got any more connections there than any other ex- Death Eater.”

“No. but she'll know how to sort it. They can't possibly believe you would do something like that.”

“I'm gay,” Harry said, and took the spatula from Draco so that he could scoop up some pancakes. “There's no telling what I might do.”

There were protestors at the funeral, but they, and the tabs, were held back by the barrier spell at the edge of the cemetery, maintained by half a dozen Aurors. Harry stood between Draco, in gray robes, and Lucius, in very dark green. The only black in sight was Andromeda's neat suit, the one she'd worn years ago to bury her husband, her daughter, her son-in-law. He felt-- not distracted. Something even worse. Distanced, maybe, as if his body were there but his mind was somewhere else entirely. It wasn't what Teddy deserved, none of it was, but it was all he could manage.

As they were walking out, someone yelled, “Death Eater scum,” and hurled an empty bottle at them. Draco caught it out of the air with reflexes like a cat's, and held it for a minute before he set it carefully on the edge of a tombstone.

Despite everything that had happened, or maybe because of it, there were too many mourners to fit into Andromeda's tidy little house. Instead they went to Malfoy Manor. Harry saw Hermione pale at the sight of the wrought- iron gates, and Greg Goyle squeeze her arm, and then they were through, moving slowly down the drive. The trees were bare, graceful, sad; Harry didn't know if it was better or worse, being buried in winter.

Inside, everyone stood about politely, afraid to touch the walls and furniture. Teddy's friends from the Aurors College were subdued, shy. One of the girls couldn't stop crying. There were faces Harry hadn't seen in years: Luna, Neville, even Ginny, but he couldn't bring himself to talk to any of them. He sat on a sofa in the corner, and let Draco and Pansy and Ron and Hermione fend everyone off. He was fairly sure Draco was being really rude, the way he only ever was at the worst possible moments, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

After a while Harry got up and went into the kitchen. Narcissa was there, loading mini-quiches onto a silver tray, and, Harry saw, crying. His first impulse was to back quietly out, but there was something about the angle of her shoulders that made him think of Draco. “I loved him too,” he said, and she swung around to face him. 

“Oh, Harry. I know you did. We all did. And whatever else, Teddy knew it. There was never a child so loved.”

Harry thought of the fierce set of her jaw in the early morning the day after Ted's death, and believed her. “The Ministry's suspended me,” he said. “Because of the rumors.” It wasn't something he'd meant to tell people today, and certainly not to tell Narcissa. And yet-- somehow when he wasn't looking, the Malfoys had become his family, too, as much as Draco, Teddy, Hermione, Ron and the rest of the Weasleys. 

Narcissa put the heavy tray down. “Unwise of them,” she said. “But it can be undone. Someone panicked, that's all.”

She met his eyes, saying it, and he saw, incredulous, that she didn't believe it. She didn't believe that they would have him back, she thought he'd lose his job because of a ridiculous obscene fucking rumor. But then, why would she believe it? She and her family and her friends were still being punished for the war, for things that had happened twenty years ago. And Narcissa's greatest crime had been being the mother and wife of Death Eaters, not being one herself. Why should she have any faith in the innate rationality of the Ministry?

It was something he hadn't said, had hardly dared think, but-- “What if I don't want to go back?”, he asked. “They keep doing this, they keep screwing me over on no grounds at all. It isn't a crime, being gay. What if I'm tired of always forgiving and forgetting?”

“Then,” Narcissa said, picking up the mini-quiches with a flourish, “you'd better get a damned good lawyer and sue them for every sickle they've got. It's about time someone did.”

When she had gone, Harry sat down at the table and put his head on his arms. He didn't precisely love his job, but he liked it, liked most of the people he worked with. He didn't owe Justice anything, though. Not after this, not for being dismissed this way. And maybe-- maybe it was time someone took a stand.

By the time he went back in, half the people had gone. Ginny had gone, which was good. Things were mostly amicable, these days; having decided that he liked other men he could hardly hold a grudge about Ginny's doing the same, but it would never be anything but awkward. He sat down with Ron, Neville, Draco and Goyle and got to listen in great detail to a replay of the South Africa game. He didn't mind. It was better than thinking.

That night after everyone had gone, he and Draco curled up in Draco's old bedroom, under a night-sky ceiling charmed to show the stars the Blacks had been named for. And surrounded by faded posters of half dressed quidditch stars, most of them male. “It must have been a terrible shock to your mother, when you finally came out,” he said sleepily, and beside him Draco snorted.

“I think the only one surprised was me,” he admitted. “Mum and Dad were great. They hated Sergei, you know. Dad called him the Communist Manifesto.”

“Do you miss him?”, Harry asked. It was something he'd never dared to think too much about.

“I did at first,” Draco said. “When I wrecked my shoulder, and ended up in hospital, and they said I'd never play again. I kept thinking he'd call, that he'd come back, that he'd say it was all a mistake. But afterward-- when I went home alone-- it was Astoria I missed. She was pretty great, and I never realized until it was too late. I was crazy about Serge, but she was the one I went home to every night, and it was hard to sleep without her.” 

“I don't really miss Ginny,” Harry confessed. “I feel like I should, but--.”

“You always liked her brother better anyway?”

Harry laughed at that. “No. I can't say I ever really thought of Ron that way.”

“Neville? Because he's gotten awfully fat.”

“Nope. I didn't really look at boys. I barely looked at the girls. I wasn't-- I was looking for family, I guess.”

Draco reached over and squeezed his hand. “Sorry,” he said. “I take Lucius and Narcissa for granted, sometimes, but I know...”

“It's okay,” Harry said, squeezing back. “It wasn't your fault.”

“No,” Draco agreed, “but a lot of other things--.”

“No.” 

Draco laughed a little, his breath warm on Harry's neck. The bed was much narrower than the one in their flat, as narrow as the one they'd almost shared their first night together, when Harry had gotten shitfaced at a charity dinner and Draco had reluctantly taken him home with him. Harry had gone to sleep on the floor, but, still drunk, he'd gotten up to piss and gotten in bed with Draco afterward. He could still remember lying there with Draco asleep beside him; he'd thought then that if he could only have that for the rest of his life, there was nothing he wouldn't be willing to give up. 

He still thought that. “No,” he said again. “None of this is your fault. Not my parents, not Teddy, and not my job.”

“I might also have been gratuitously unpleasant to your ex-wife.”

“A little unpleasantness never hurt anyone,” Harry said, watching the lazy wheeling stars overhead: Cygnus and Orion and dim Merope, Pegasus and Adromeda, Bellatrix and Sirius and Draco. 

“I guess you wouldn't be willing to fuck me blind in my childhood bedroom?”, Draco asked wistfully.

“Not with Viktor Krum watching us and judging, sorry.”

“He's seen worse,” Draco said sleepily.

The house was freezing in the morning, the heating charms worn off and the fires gone out. Draco went straight to practice, and Harry went home. He sat on the couch in jeans and a sweatshirt, watching a cooking programme and trying not to panic. Soon enough Draco's career would be over and they could do this together-- they could do it with Draco's parents, at Malfoy Manor-- he wondered, distracted, what Lucius and Narcissa actually did do all day. What did anyone do? 

Ginny had stayed home with each of the children for a month, and gone straight back to work afterwards. “Too quiet,” she'd said when he'd asked if she was sure, “and anyway I don't see you volunteering to try it.” Now that he was trying it, Harry agreed completely. He was dying of boredom and it had been-- he checked his watch-- an hour and a half.

There was a knock on the door, and he answered it gratefully, thinking that maybe it was Penelope, come to tell him that she'd sorted things after all. She'd sent him six texts yesterday, all of them apologetic and optimistic and utterly fucking useless. But it wasn't Pen, it was Pansy Parkinson, on her mobile as always. 

She smiled at Harry, still talking, and he let her in. She wasn't his favorite person, but she was company, at least. He made coffee while she talked, putting milk in hers, but not sugar. He knew how Pansy drank her coffee, which was just weird. She'd always be Draco's friend, not his, but he knew her better than he knew Neville or Luna these days.

“Okay,” she said when they were sitting across from each other. “There's something I need to show you. Draco won't like it, but what else is new?” She reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of letters, some on parchment, some typed on paper.

Harry flipped slowly through them. They were job offers for Draco. Seeker positions mostly, but a handful of coaching jobs, too; Riga, Belarus, Malaysia, Texas, Ivory Coast, and a half dozen more, some big teams and some for cities or even countries Harry'd barely heard of.

“Draco could go,” Pansy said. “Take one of these, take any of these and go. And I think he should. They're going to put him on the World Cup team, I think, and maybe the Cannons will give him another contract, maybe even one of the better teams. And then this will happen again in two years. He'll run out of miracles eventually. As it is-- half the country is waiting for him to fail, and the other half is waiting for you to fail. But Draco's too damned stubborn to leave, unless you ask him to.”

“I never thought--,” Harry said, because it was true. He'd never thought of leaving England. He thought of it now, touching the horns of a tiny inked longhorn, the wings of an imprinted dragon seal. “You think he would go?”

Pansy laughed, not unkindly. “He would go anywhere for you, idiot. And he wants to go.”

“He does?”

Pansy pulled the top letter away from him. “In-- Amarillo, you wouldn't be Harry Potter, savior of the wizarding world turned practicing homo. And he wouldn't be Draco Malfoy, quidditch star and former genocidal maniac. You'd be that cute English couple who leave drinks parties early so that you can slope off to bed.”

“Is genocidal even a word?”

She sneered at him, but without the edge she usually gave it, and he could see the girl Draco had been friends with forever under the spare elegant lines of the woman she had made herself. “You're his agent,” Harry said. “Do you think Texas is the best offer?”

Pansy took the letters back, and sorted them into three neat piles. “Good, better, best,” she said. “I burn the insulting ones before he has a chance to see them. Any of these, adjusted for cost of living, is a bigger offer than he'll get in England even if he wins the fucking Cup single-handed.”

“I'll think about it,” Harry said, and was surprised to realize he meant it. It wasn't that London wasn't home, because it was. But what he had said to Narcissa was true-- he was tired of the Ministry, tired of being blamed every time something went wrong, tired of the endless nasty digs in the _Prophet_. Maybe starting over wouldn't be so bad.

Pansy had gone but Harry was still sitting at the table when Draco's key turned in the lock. Harry stayed where he was, waiting, fingering the edges of the letters Pansy had brought, half nervous and half excited. Draco threw his bag in the corner and his jacket on the couch, and came into the kitchen, leaning over Harry to kiss the top of his head. “What are you doing?” he asked, looking curiously down at the papers Harry held. “Did you hear back from the Ministry?”

“No,” Harry said. He held the top sheet up for Draco, who squinted at it. “Pansy brought them. She thought--.”

“She had no business thinking.”

“No, but-- the thing is, she wasn't wrong. I mean, maybe about Belarus, but Draco, what if we did go?”

Draco dropped heavily into the seat next to Harry. “You're serious,” he said.

“Yeah. I kind of am.”

Draco sighed. “I meant to, you know? After Serge-- after Astoria left, I thought I'd pack up and head somewhere warm, play a couple of seasons in L.A., or Rio, somewhere no one had ever heard of me. But then I thought maybe that was too much like running away. So I stayed. And now--.” He looked down at the parchment. “We can do it, if you want,” he said.

“But it isn't what you want?”, Harry asked, confused.

“Yeah. Of course. Where were you thinking? They're all good offers, Pansy doesn't show me the bad ones.” He slid his chair closer to Harry's. “What about Rabat? Aunt Bella's daughters live north of Marrakesh, I think--.”

“Yeah, so not Rabat,” Harry said, although he'd never actually met Delphine and Hydra Lestrange. “You realize I've never been farther than the south of France, right? And that was for an epically disastrous holiday with Ginny and the kids.” 

“It'll be an adventure,” Draco said. He was a pretty good liar. Six months ago, Harry might not have realized. But he knew Draco better, now, better in some ways than he'd ever known Ginny. He knew him well enough to know what that second's hesitation had meant, that heartbeat of anger at Pansy.

“I thought this was something you wanted,” he said. “Draco--.”

 

“I love you,” Draco said. “And this is my fault. It's my fault they dragged your name into this. It's my fault they dragged Ted's name into this. I want you to be happy, if you can be happy somewhere else, because I'm not sure I can fix this, okay? So if you want to go to Kuala Lumpur or Amarillo or pretty much anywhere, I'm okay with that. Just give me a chance to make it up to you before you leave.”

“That wasn't me trying to leave,” Harry said, taking his hand. “That was me saying, Pansy told me this is something you wanted, and I figured why not, but if it isn't we'll stay here and I'll be the best quidditch WAG in the history of WAGs. I'll come to all your games with pompoms--.”

“I don't want to play quidditch,” Draco said very quietly, not looking at Harry. “I don't want to play it, I don't want to coach it, I don't want to manage or do broadcasts or any of it.”

“What do you mean, you don't want to play? Draco, you love quidditch. No one loves it more than you, and no one's better at it than you.”

Draco did look up, finally, at that. “Used to. I used to love it. I'm tired of it. All of it. I'm never going to be twenty-one again-- I'm never going to be thirty-one again. These kids, I've got to work twice as hard as they do, and I'm only beating them now because they never think. And I'm just-- I'm tired of being tired all the time, and hungry, and never being quite good enough. There's got to be something else I can do, right?”

“Of course there are,” Harry said, and Draco squeezed his hand. “But in September you were dying to play for as long as they'd have you. I don't-- are you sure this isn't about Lynch?”

“It's about Lynch,” Draco said. “Lynch, and Teddy, and Malcolm, because fuck am I sick of going to funerals.” He was crying, Harry saw. He didn't think Draco'd cried for Teddy before; he hadn't seen him cry since Malcolm had died. He hadn't known what to say then and he didn't know now.


	4. 4

The Cannons won the final for the first time in any of their lifetimes. Watching Draco hold the trophy up, his ring catching the light, Ron said, “I don't know whether to kiss him or kill him.”

“Neither, please,” Harry answered. They had watched the game from the team's box, and they had a fantastic view of the trophy presentation. He wondered if he was the only one who could tell just how fake Draco's smile was. Even Greg, who'd broken three fingers in the last ten minutes of the game, looked happier. Then again, Greg was done; he'd announced his retirement last week. Draco still had the World Cup.

They got the news as they came into the flat after the game. “Turn it down,” Harry suggested, when Pansy texted to say Draco had been selected. “It's just quidditch. It's not worth being miserable for.”

“It's the Cup,” Draco said, not looking at Harry. “It's a hell of a lot more than just another quidditch game. You can't turn something like that down. Not without burning a lot of bridges I can't-- we can't-- afford to burn. If I don't play, and play well, treason is the least of what they'll accuse me of.”

Melodrama, the curse of the Malfoys. Harry kissed him to stop him talking about quidditch. He was trying to be a good sport about it all, the Commonwealth Games, the European Championships, the endless hours of practice, the thousands of game videos Draco watched when he wasn't in practice--. The fact that their plan to get out of England seemed to be on indefinite hiatus.

He'd been suspended from Justice for six weeks, and he hated it. And if he fought back, if he went to the papers or sued--. He'd never wanted to be a poster boy for gay rights, never wanted his relationship public, never wanted anything but to be left alone.

And it wasn't Draco's fault that he couldn't have that, but Harry had to consciously remind himself to be gentle when he pushed Draco down onto the couch and ground their hips together, gentle when he bit Draco's neck just where it joined his shoulder. He had no reason to punish Draco, and this was no way to do it. He came before Draco did, and then he dragged Draco's jeans down and gave him as slow and careful and good a blowjob as he could manage.

Afterward Draco blinked at him, his eyes half-open and his mouth swollen from Harry's kisses, tired and soft as Draco rarely was, his edges blunted. Usually it was Harry who felt that way. “Not that I'm complaining,” Draco said, “but what brought that on?”

“Felt like it,” Harry answered flippantly. “It must be the bling.”

Draco held up his hand obligingly so that they could admire the big, flashy ring. “I've got two more, you know.” He sighed. “But I'm not sure I could handle two blowjobs. Never mind three. Old age, I guess.”

“Did you ever-- you know-- with Sergei?”, Harry asked. It was stupid, and none of his business, but the words slipped out. Sometimes he felt like he'd missed something, and he didn't even know enough to know what.

Draco blinked, but the edge of his mouth turned up a little, a precursor to the familiar Malfoy smirk. “I'm not sure what the question was there, Potter.” He slid the ring off and tossed it on the coffee table. “He never blew me three times in one night. I'm not sure he did it three times in two years. But he fucked me up against the wall in the locker room after everyone else had gone home, the night the Hornets won the last time. And after that he went home to his girlfriend and I went home to my wife. If you want me to be more specific--.”

“Did you ever feel guilty?”

“Is that-- do you think I'm cheating on you? Is that what you think? Every time I went from Serge to Astoria I felt like the biggest shit in the world, Harry, yes I felt guilty. And I always promised myself that it was the last time, and I always knew I was lying.”

“That wasn't what I meant,” Harry said quickly. “It wasn't.”

“Look,” Draco said, and he didn't look soft or satisfied at all any more. “Sergei picked me because he could see I was easy and he thought I had more to lose than he did. And he bolted as soon as things got bad. You stayed, Potter. That makes you the better guy. You don't have to compete with him because as far as I'm concerned you won. You won the minute you called me your boyfriend on live TV in front of half of Britain.”

Harry didn't just want to be loyal, though. He wanted to be hotter and more adventurous in bed and more fun, and he had a feeling that he wasn't. Sergei Ivanovitch was ten years younger than they were and had been the best quidditch player to come out of the Russian Federation, maybe the best player of his generation-- and even Harry had to admit he'd been attractive. Blaise Zabini had been basically sex on legs at seventeen and he'd only got better with age. It was a bit lowering to think about.

“Sorry,” he muttered, because he did have some pride left. “I shouldn't have asked.”

“Fair enough,” Draco said. “I shouldn't have answered.”

For a moment Harry thought they were going to fight about it, almost wanted to fight about it, and then Draco caved, offering him a tired smile. Harry and Ginny hadn't fought, not ever. He and Draco fought all the time, and Harry had begun to prefer it. At least with Draco, he usually knew where he'd gone wrong. He didn't like this forbearance; it was too like the way he'd treated Ginny, as if her feelings weren't important enough to fight about it.

Draco was yawning, clearly exhausted by six hours of quidditch and a blowjob, but Harry grabbed his wrist anyway. “Fight back,” he said. “If I'm being a dick, let me have it, but don't just let it go.”

“Fine,” Draco said, and yanked his wrist away. “You're being a dick, and I was going to wait until tomorrow to tell you so, but since it's so important, fuck you for asking. You know who I am and where I've been and you knew it before the first time you crawled into my bed. You don't get to hold it against me, not any of it.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, and laughed.

After a minute Draco laughed, too, and leaned against him. “Carry me to bed. Please.”

“That would be the end of my back.”

“Fuck you for that, too,” Draco said, but he was pretty clearly half asleep already. Harry pulled him to his feet and dragged him down the hall to the bedroom. It took him a long time to fall asleep, which wasn't unusual these days; he lay listening to Draco breathe and wished that things were different.

In the morning when he woke up Draco was already in the kitchen sitting at the counter. Harry poured himself coffee and opened the refrigerator. He had his back to Draco when the other man started to talk.

“Blaise was first,” Draco said. “When were fifteen or so-- only making out and a couple of handjobs.”

Harry whipped around, staring.

“Then there was Astoria, although that was just fooling around. Pureblood witches used to be pretty careful not to-- at least the nice girls. Then Malcolm, during the war, and Parvati Patil, who wasn't a nice girl, which went on for a couple of years. And a handful of not very serious dates, and then Astoria again. Sergei. Blaise again. A couple of quidditch groupies, and a couple of Muggles, none of whom I slept with more than once. And then you.”

“You don't have to--,” Harry started.

“Oh, I do.” There was a folded newsmagazine lying on the counter at Draco's elbow. He passed it to Harry.

Harry unfolded it. _Magic_ , arguably the worst of the wizarding tabs. The headline story was, “Hydra Black, British Quidditch's Great Black Hope,” and there was a picture under it, with the caption, “No surprise that Hydra Black, the daughter of Bellatrix Black and, rumor has it, a highly- placed Death Eater, is an ace Seeker who has been tapped to play traveling reserve under Draco Malfoy at the upcoming Quidditch World Cup.” The girl-- woman, because Harry knew she must be a few months older than Ted-- was beautiful. She looked like Bellatrix, with brown hair curling out of a tight braid and fair skin, but her eyes were a pale wolf-blue.

“She isn't mine,” Draco said quietly. “Or Dad's. I never slept with Bella and I am damn sure he didn't either.”

“That would never have occurred to me.” It had the virtue of being the truth. “Why--?”

“There are only a handful of people who know who her father is. Me, Mum, Dad. Marius Lestrange, who raised her. So far as I know neither Hydra nor Delphine know. Delphine was conceived by rape and born in Azkaban. But Harry-- Hydra's father was the Dark Lord himself.”

“Jesus Christ,” Harry said, leaning on the stove to keep from falling over. “Jesus, Draco.”

“It can't come out,” Draco said. “But no one in their right mind would believe she was Roddy's daughter. Not with those eyes.”

“No,” Harry agreed. “Which leaves you and Lucius.”

“And Greyback. It's a shame Severus's eyes were dark.”

Harry looked down at the woman. “Even if they hadn't been, no one would believe she was Snape's daughter, either.”

“I'm sorry, Potter,” Draco said miserably. “If I'd known-- I knew she played for a farm team in Morocco but I never even thought about her having British citizenship.”

“Is she good?”

“Pansy sent me a video. She will be. In a couple of years she could be world class.”

“Crap,” Harry said. “They already think you slept with Teddy. Compared to that, a little fling with the Black Bitch when you were a kid is nothing.”

“Except for the part where I'm flaming gay and the part where she was my aunt and mad as a rabid Crup.”

Harry sighed and sat down next to Draco. “So what do we do?”

“Deny it, but refuse to take a blood test,” Draco said. “Everyone will immediately assume that she's either mine or Dad's. But I wanted you to know the truth.”

Harry touched his hand. “Hey. I knew the important part already.” Except, of course, that the really important part wasn't who Hydra's father wasn't, but who he had been. Tom Riddle's daughter, with all of her mother's charm and her father's arrogance and unquestionable and formidable intelligence shining from the cool wolf stare.

If Draco was dangerous, a rallying point for the remaining Death Eaters, how much worse was Hydra Black? If Shacklebolt had known, he would have had her killed years ago. But if Harry told anyone in the Aurors College and Draco found out, he'd never forgive Harry. And if Hydra herself didn't know--. All those years with Ginny, he'd put the job first and never counted the cost to his marriage or his family. Now he found himself putting Draco first, and doing it without a second's hesitation.

He hadn't understood why Ginny left, why she said she was tired of never being enough for him. Now he hoped that in Michael she'd found someone who was as mad about her as Harry was about Draco, as willing to break all his rules and burn all his bridges. She deserved that, to be loved the way he hadn't been able to love her.

After a moment Draco said, very quietly, “At least there's something I can do for her. Scorpius wants to change his name to Jack permanently when he leaves school, did I tell you that? Apparently Scorpius Malfoy sounds too Pureblood. There's nothing I can give him and nothing I can do for him that won't make things harder instead of easier. I can't fix things with the Ministry for you, and I couldn't save Ted. But I can give her my name, Harry, we could be her family--.”

“I don't want to be family to Voldemort's daughter,” Harry cut in, and the words came out harder than he'd meant them to, hard enough that Draco flinched, but Merlin. He'd thought there was nothing he wouldn't do for Draco, nothing he wouldn't give up and nowhere he wouldn't go. He'd never thought Draco would ask for something like this.

“Of course,” Draco said. “Sorry. I didn't think.” They fought about almost everything, but not the war. Never the war-- because there was only one right side when it came to the war. And it wasn't Draco's.

“I'll say whatever you want me to. But I don't want to be anywhere near her.”

“Of course,” Draco said again, looking down at the photo of the girl. Now that Harry knew, he couldn't help looking for Voldemort in that pretty face.

“She's not Teddy. You can't expect--.”

Draco was crying; he rubbed the tears away with the back of his hand and sniffed impatiently. “I don't. I really don't.” Harry felt like the biggest asshole in the world. But he couldn't do it, couldn't even bring himself to put an arm around Draco. Before he could think of something else to do or say, Draco's phone buzzed on the counter. It was Pansy, because it was always Pansy.

“They want to interview me and Hydra live together on WQN tomorrow,” Draco said, moving away, shoving the paper into the recycle bin and rinsing his coffee mug in the sink.

“I bet they do. Draco, how sure are you about this? How do you even know?”

Draco fished an envelope from under the microwave and slid a small pile of black and white photos out. They were old, the edges curling, so old that the people in them had stopped moving. A wedding, on a lovely sunlit day in the grounds of a big house Harry didn't recognize. The first photograph was of three men-- two men and a boy, really, one in his sixties, one perhaps twenty- four or five, and the boy sixteen at most. They were austerely handsome, very dark, perhaps Egyptian or Arabic, in sharply cut dark robes. “Marius Lestrange, and his nephews Rodolphus and Rabastan-- his brother Tristan was killed trying to free Grindelwald in 1963.”

Harry flipped to the next photo. “Bellatrix and Rodolphus,” Draco said, though it wasn't really necessary. Bellatrix had been an extraordinarily beautiful bride. The next photo, of the three Black sisters, made Harry's breath catch-- not for Bellatrix, but for Narcissa and Andromeda, their long hair loose, very young and very happy.

The bottom photo was of Bellatrix again, dancing with a tall, good looking Englishman. And in this picture she was more than beautiful. There was a light in her face, a softness, as she looked up at him. “Lord Voldemort,” Draco said.

“I see what you mean,” Harry agreed.

The next day he went to Ron and Hermione's, because he knew Ron would insist on watching the interview and he wanted to see what Hermione thought. He and Ron sat on their comfortable overstuffed sofa, while Hugo put crayons up his nose.

Hydra was even in prettier in person. She and Draco were both wearing blue England jackets and she'd streaked her hair blonde. If Harry hadn't known better, he'd have thought they were father and daughter or brother and sister too.

“Lucius Malfoy, you dog,” Ron hissed at the tv, as Hydra described a quidditch match she'd played in in Marrakesh. It was like seeing Draco in drag; even the way she moved was the same.

“Wow,” Hermione said, looking up from her paperwork. “No wonder she dropped the Lestrange name. She is every inch a Black. What does Narcissa think, I wonder?”

Harry shrugged, aware that he came off convincingly sulky. “She probably likes it. You know how Purebloods are about family.”

“Oy,” Ron objected, without real heat. “Not my family.”

“True,” Hermione said, ignoring him. “Mad, the lot of them.”

There was no question that she bought it. And if she did, everyone would. Harry felt a moment of indignation for Lucius Malfoy but then he remembered that he hated him, and that Lucius might not have slept with his sister-in-law but he had almost certainly slept with Snape.

The interview dragged on. Hugo climbed into Harry's lap and smiled at him with turquoise and fuschia crayoned teeth. Harry rested his chin on Hugo's head, while Hugo leaned against him, warm and sticky and trusting. Family.

“She's like a girl version of Malfoy,” Ron said. “I can't believe I'm attracted to Malfoy with breasts, but I am.”

Harry laughed. “Believe it or not, he's pretty amazing without breasts.”

“I guess you really are gay now.”

“Ronald,” Hermione said warningly, just the way she had when they were fourteen.

“I guess,” Harry told him, and it wasn't unthinkable or even terrifying to say it.

He went home and made dinner, and watched Draco eat, thinking of Hydra, of Scorpius-call-me-Jack, of James and Albie and Lily, of Hugo curled in his lap, heavy and smelling of crayon wax and grass and chocolate.

“I think--,” he said, feeling for the words, and Draco turned a little away from the tv to look at him. “What if--,” and it came out in a rush. “What if we had a baby? Now that I'm not working?”

Draco set his fork down, and the tv flickered and went out. Harry bit his lip. Two blenders, a microwave, and now the tv, and it was only April; Draco was tough on appliances. “You want a baby,” Draco said, as if he wasn't quite sure what the words meant. “A baby, baby?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, and to his surprise it felt right, like a puzzle piece snapping into place. Like what he had with Draco.

It was fairly clear that it didn't feel the same way to Draco. Harry tried not to look at the refrigerator. “Yesterday you wanted to move to Texas, and today you want a baby?”

“California,” Harry corrected, even though he knew it was a mistake.

Draco waved this off as irrelevant. “Fuck California. What would you even do with a baby? Where would we even get a baby? That spell is illegal for a reason-- is Granger pregnant and trying to pawn the baby off on you? Is that what brought this on? I'm not having a ginger-haired child, Potter.”

“What? No. I don't think she's pregnant, anyway. We could adopt, maybe. Or get a surrogate.”

“It's pretty hard to find a Pureblood surrogate,” Draco objected. “And most of the country thinks we're deviant child molesters.”

Harry knew, of course; he knew that adoption was a longshot and surrogacy was expensive and children born of mixed parentage had a much higher chance of being Squibs. He knew that this was out of the blue. He was being unreasonable even by Draco’s standards, which were impressive. 

“I was watching you with Hydra,” he said finally, starting over. “And thinking about what you said after Ted’s funeral, the first time we talked about moving-- that you didn’t want to run away. I kept thinking that we had to get away, to start over. Be other people, somewhere no one knows who we are,” he said finally. “But today-- I keep thinking I’ve never run away. Neither of has. And I’m not so sure I want to start now. This is home. England is home.”

He sighed. “This is where our family is. Not just the kids, or the Weasleys, or your parents, but Pansy and Greg and Ron and Hermione. Andromeda--.”

“I get the idea,” Draco cut in. “Harry, you’re my family now. If it makes you happy we’ll go. We can always come back. The kids are away three quarters of the year as it is-- they’ll be at university soon. My parents won’t like it, but they’ll understand. Our friends will understand.” 

He wasn’t listening. “I don’t want to go,” Harry said, taking Draco’s hand. “I want us to stay here, to make a life on our terms. Not because-- not to go because we--. I just want--.” 

“Stop talking,” Draco said very gently. Harry hadn’t expected gentleness. He did stop, mid-sentence, and Draco’s mind brushed his. Harry thought again of Hugo, warm and solid, of the mixture of pride and terror he’d felt meeting James, of Lucius and Narcissa and Andromeda, making grilled cheese sandwiches, of _family_. They had never done this; Harry’d barely seen Draco use magic to do more than open wine bottles and set fire to parking tickets since they were at school. He’d forgotten that Draco was talented, well-taught, and fiercely intelligent, forgotten that he would know Legilimency as well as any Auror.

Draco pulled his hand away. “I’m sorry,” he said, “Harry, I can’t.” He looked desperately tired, or maybe only desperately sad. “I-- I love you, you know that, but I don’t want a baby. I didn’t want Scorpius. We didn’t plan for him. I wouldn’t-- do that to a kid, if i could help it.”

Harry couldn’t think of a single thing to say, and it must have showed on his face. “It isn’t fair,” Draco said. “You think this is what I wanted for Scorpius? To be ashamed of his name, his family? There’s a reason most of my friends don’t have children. But when Astoria got pregnant, we couldn’t-- we couldn’t bring ourselves to make it go away. And I love him, I do, but I’ve seen what’s happened to him because of me. I can’t even imagine what they’d do to a child of ours.”

It felt like Cruciatus, sharp and sudden and immense: pain and the promise of pain to come. Harry swallowed against it, remembered to breathe. Remembered this was something he hadn’t even known he wanted until today. “Okay,” he said. It wasn’t like Draco was wrong, after all. “Okay, yeah.” This time he was the one who was crying; he got up and started to clear the table, hoping Draco wouldn’t see.

“I’m sorry,” Draco said again. Harry piled the dishes in the sink and turned on the water, afraid to open his mouth, still trying to choke back tears. Draco went into the bedroom, and came back out, and before Harry could do more than turn around he was out the door of the flat.

He was wearing running clothes, at least. Harry thought that meant he was coming back. The tv was definitely dead and after a while Harry curled up in bed, not even trying to read, listening for Draco. He heard the front door open and close just after midnight, and then the shower in the bathroom off the kids’ room came on. He waited, tense and unhappy, for a long time. Draco never came to bed.

In the morning Harry stayed in the shower until he was sure Draco’d gone, and then collected lattes and biscotti and went to see Hermione. She’d been the smartest person he knew when he was eleven, and nothing had changed. 

“I thought you might be by,” she said, looking up from her paperwork. “Sit down, Harry. It can’t be as bad as you think it is.”

Harry sat. He told her everything, more or less. He didn’t cry this time. He didn’t mention blowjobs, or Hydra Black. He didn’t mention Hugo, or Squibs, or the autism spectrum, because unlike Draco he was capable of tact.

“Oh, dear,” Hermione said when he was finished. “You two are such a mess. Look, there’s something you ought to know about, anyway, before you make any decisions.” She handed him a file. “This is Hydra Black’s DNA result. We ran her blood as well as cast a Paternus Charm, so it’s definite.”

Harry flipped it open warily. He’d learned to interpret results as an Auror in the field, and now his eyes slid automatically down the page. _Draco Malfoy_ it read, and beside it, Confirmed by Paternus. Harry shut the file.

“Where did you get this?”, he asked. “She’s only been in the country twenty-four hours and it takes three weeks for the Paternus Charm to work.”

“Apparently we had it on file,” Hermione said. “Marius Lestrange requested DNA tests from a British firm on both girls just before Delphine turned eighteen. He married her as soon as she finished at Beauxbatons. At least he checked to be sure she wasn’t his great-niece first.”

“Gross,” Harry said. “He must be like a hundred and ten.”

“They have four sons together. Apparently he hasn’t ordered paternity tests on them, or at least he hasn’t had them done in England. Do you think Draco knows?”, Hermione asked. 

Harry thought of Draco the night before, insisting that he’d never wanted children. “How could he not?”

“Oh, I suspect Narcissa and Bellatrix could have worked it out between them,” Hermione said wryly. 

“She was his aunt--.”

“Ron’s grandparents are first cousins,” Hermione pointed out. “On both sides. They don’t think about it the way we do, you know that.”

“But still,” Harry said, shuddering. “You don’t think he--.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure the results were faked,” Hermione said. “Although I think it’s interesting they chose to use Draco’s DNA instead of Lucius’s. The real question is, how could Hydra’s father be so terrible that the Malfoys thought Draco would be a better option?”

Harry swallowed, feeling sick. “I don’t know.” He did know, of course. That was the problem. Hydra’s father was exactly that terrible. “How did they fake the results?”

“Narcissa,” Hermione said. “I don’t know how she did it, yet, but I know it was her. She’s wasted on Lucius; she ought to be head of Gringotts or the Minister of Magic or something by now.”

“So are you running Hydra’s results against the database?”

Hermione shook her head. “She hasn’t done anything wrong. We don’t have any reason to investigate her, and even if we did, most of the Death Eaters were dead before we built the database. Chances are we wouldn’t get a hit anyway. I think maybe the Malfoys just did it to fuck with Marius. Yaxley is listed as Delphine’s father. Yaxley! He wasn’t even in Azkaban when she was conceived.”

“Why would they even do that?”, Harry demanded. “It makes no sense.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “You accused your mother-in-law of murdering a man in a coma in January.”

“Okay, yeah. But--.”

“Harry. I know who Hydra’s father is. Augustus Rookwood was an Unspeakable, and he reported directly to the head of the Unspeakables. It’s classified, of course-- and it’s well above your pay grade.”

It was an old rivalry; Harry didn’t bring up the unfairness of expecting Aurors, not to mention Justice, to do their jobs properly with only half the available information.

“My predecessor made the decision to keep her under surveillance but not to act unless it was necessary,” Hermione said, “and I’ve opted to continue with that policy because frankly, I couldn’t bring myself to have a twenty year old quidditch player assassinated--.”

The door opened, and Goyle came in, carefully balancing two cups of coffee and a bag of pastries with only one good hand. “Hey,” he said, “Ruth said you were taking a break anyway and to come right up--,” he began, and then caught sight of Harry. “Potter.”

Harry was watching Hermione, though. She went red and then white, and Harry knew.

“Fuck,” he said, feeling sick. “Hermione--.”

“I should go,” Goyle said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, stay, Greg,” Hermione said. “Harry, Ron and I are still working out the details, but we’re separating. We haven’t been happy for a long time, you know that, and we haven’t had sex in--.”

“I have to go,” Harry said, “I’ve just remembered, I promised Draco I’d pick up his dry cleaning, I have to go right now.” He did not quite knock the coffee out of Goyle’s hand on his way out, but he wouldn’t have much cared if he had.

When he was safely out in the street he sat down on a bench and called Draco, not really expecting him to pick up but wanting to at least hear his voice. 

To his surprise, Draco answered. “Harry? Listen, I’m sorry about last night.”

“No,” Harry said, talking over him. “I mean, yes, I am too, and we need to talk about it, but not over the phone. Hermione is sleeping with your fucking mate Greg Goyle.”

“What?” Draco said, and then, clearly to someone else, “tell him two minutes, please, it’s a family emergency.” And then, to Harry, “Sorry, but I cannot possibly have heard you right, Potter. Please tell me that this is some kind of sick joke.”

“Oh, if only it were,” Harry said. “It was scarring. I may never be the same.” As he talked, he started to feel as if he could breathe normally for the first time since the night before. He and Draco would be okay. Maybe they wouldn’t have a baby-- and he spared a second to think, please God and Merlin and anyone else in earshot, let Hydra not be Draco’s daughter-- maybe they weren’t meant to have a baby. But they were still a family.


	5. 5

“So you really think it’s true?”, Harry asked. “Why would she--,”

Draco opened the refrigerator and stared inside, as if willing the universe to provide an explanation, or at least carbohydrates. “I’ve never understood why she did a lot of what she’s done,” he said, taking out the pumpkin juice and looking at the label. He put it back and took out a can of Diet Coke. “Anyway, Greg is a really good guy. I’m not sure why you’re so upset. Hermione would be lucky to hit that.”

“I didn’t mean about Hermione and Greg,” Harry said, “and also, please never say ‘hit that’ about Greg again. And if the pumpkin juice carton is empty, don’t just put it back in.”

Draco took it out and put it on the counter. “Mum’s coming, so you can ask her that yourself. I’ve never understood why she does anything either.”

“Narcissa’s coming here?” Harry got up and began to pile the dishes on the counter into the sink. “Can you do something with those newspapers?”

“Relax, Potter, she knows we live in squalor most of the time.”

“No,” Harry corrected. “She thinks we live in squalor most of the time. I’d rather not confirm it.” He gathered up the paper and the pumpkin juice carton and threw both in the recycling. Draco sighed, and got up to charm the plates clean. 

Harry had expected both Malfoys, but when the doorbell rang, Narcissa was alone on the doorstep. Harry let her in, looking over his shoulder at Draco, who pointedly hadn’t got up. Her eyes went immediately to her son, and Harry watched her, trying to read something, anything, in her expression. She was the same, though, composed and beautiful, in the ageless way that only Purebloods ever seemed to achieve.

“Harry,” she said, shifting focus. “How are you?” She touched his arm and slid gently by him to join Draco at the counter. Harry followed her, feeling fat, sweaty, and slow, the way he always did around her.

“Draco,” Narcissa said, and sat down across from him. Harry dithered for a moment, wondering whether to offer her a drink, but caught Draco’s sulky expression and sat down, too.

“We were hoping you could explain this,” Draco said, and dropped the DNA results on the counter between them.

Narcissa scooped up the paper and traced over the words with a finger. “Fuck!”

Harry had never heard her curse before. It was odd, how strange the word sounded, coming from her: it was clear from the way she’d said it that it wasn’t exactly new to her. For so long, the Weasleys had been Harry’s definition of parents; he forgot sometimes that they were a generation older than the Malfoys, than his own parents would have been. 

“I’m sorry,” Narcissa was saying, to Draco. “I never meant this to happen.”

“Then it’s true?”

“Oh,” Narcissa said, a little sadly. “Yes, I expect it is. Ms. Granger would have no reason to lie to Harry.”

“I never slept with her,” Draco said to her, but he was looking at Harry. “So how did--.”

“She was my sister,” Narcissa said. “She wasn’t the same, after Azkaban. By the time you knew her. Before that she was my older sister, and she was so beautiful and fierce and strong. Leaving Delphine behind in Azkaban, it broke something in her. She knew better than to bring her, she knew what the Dark Lord would have done to the daughter of a man who had raped her. But she came to me-- she said that she wanted another child more than anything.”

Narcissa took a deep breath, and her fingers clenched on the sheet of paper, crumpling it. “They sterilized them,” she said. “The men who were prisoners in Azkaban after the first war. Roddy, Rabastan, my cousin Sirius, all of them, neutered them like feral dogs. She wanted a potion to help her conceive, she said. I thought she meant it for Roddy. But the Dark Lord-- he wasn’t sterilized, but he wasn’t human either. So I brewed it for her, and she gave it to Lord Voldemort, I presume.”

“So how did this,” Draco asked, gesturing to the paper, “happen?”

Narcissa sighed. “It was blood magic. Not dark, but very old. And it’s possible that it worked oddly with the magic of the Mark. Some magic is not meant to be combined. Blood calls to blood, sometimes.”

Draco got up and moved away, his back to them. “So you knew?”, Harry asked. “All this time?”

“I suspected that something had gone wrong,” Narcissa said, “when I first saw Hydra, because she looked rather like Draco as a baby. But I did nothing, because Bellatrix was alive and Hydra was hers. And then came the Battle of Hogwarts, and by the time the dust had cleared Marius had gotten custody of both girls. We wanted to fight it, your father and I, but the attorneys we consulted were not optimistic. And I thought-- I thought maybe she was better off being raised in Marrakesh, free from the shadow of the war.”

“If I’d known he meant to marry Delphine when she came of age,” she said to Draco’s set shoulders, “I would never have stopped fighting until both those girls were safe in England.”

Harry’d discreetly unplugged most of the appliances before Narcissa arrived; he waited nervously for the crack of Draco’s magic, surging through the flat, but it never came. Draco sat back down at the counter. “I wanted her,” he said. “Even before I knew she was mine. And you wanted to adopt,” he said to Harry, “and now we won’t have to.”

I wanted a baby, Harry thought, but he didn’t say it. What good would it do? That wound was still to raw to bear exposure, anyway. He didn’t want Narcissa to see. “Hermione said Yaxley was listed as Delphine’s father. Is that possible?”

Narcissa blinked. “I shouldn’t think so. He wasn’t anywhere near Azkaban in the 1980s. I wondered-- since we found out he was an Unspeakable, I’ve always rather suspected it was August-- Rookwood, that is. There were-- there were several of them, and sometimes they used Polyjuice.” Her voice wobbled a little, steadied. “And he always hated Bella, and he always did want what he couldn’t have.”

“And he wouldn’t be in the database.” Harry could feel it coming together, the way his cases had in the old days as an Auror. “He would have been able to fix the results when they came in--.”

It wasn’t a question, but Narcissa nodded. “And if he fixed Delphine’s results, he might have fixed Hydra’s, because the only person he hated more than Bellatrix was Lucius-- and seeing Draco accused of incest is the sort of convoluted revenge a Slytherin spy would adore.” Harry finished. He’d spent enough time with Rookwood to know.

“It’s possible,” Narcissa agreed. She looked from him to Draco, and back again. “And one of you is hoping for it to be true, and the other is hoping against it.” She smiled, and Harry thought of the laughing girl in the photograph Draco had shown him, in a world before Tom Riddle had become Lord Voldemort. It was hard to see that girl in Narcissa, who had watched so many of her friends and family die.

“I rang Hydra before I came,” Narcissa went on. “She’s waiting in the street. We can clear this up tonight if you like.”

Someone rapped on the flat’s door. Narcissa sighed. “Well, she could have inherited impatience from any number of people,” Draco said.

“In this case, I think it was your father.”

Harry went and opened the door. Lucius stood in the hall, looking annoyed, the girl behind him.

“Come in,” he said, although if he’d thought anything short of an Unforgiveable would keep them out he might have tried it.

Lucius marched by him without a word. The girl stopped and put out her hand. “Hello,” she said. “You must be Harry.”

She was even better looking in person, of course, with the same wild beauty Bellatrix had had, and none of Narcissa’s exquisite control or Andromeda’s softness. And yet-- he could see Narcissa in the shape of her face, the arch of her eyebrows, the spark in her eyes when he was slow to take her hand. 

It made Harry think of Draco, and wonder what would have happened all those years ago, if he’d taken Draco’s hand on the train to Hogwarts. He shook Hydra’s strong, calloused hand, and said, “It’s nice to meet you,” and led her through to the kitchen where Narcissa and Lucius were having a fierce, whispered argument and Draco was digging out wine glasses. 

All they had in the flat was a case of Neville’s red wine Harry’d bought mostly out of duty. It wasn’t undrinkable, but it had a gritty, medicinal aftertaste. He splashed it into glasses, glad to have something to do. Hydra took hers with a smile, but set it down without trying it. Lucius held out an impatient hand for a glass, and took a big gulp without even looking in Harry’s direction.

Harry watched as he froze, crossed the kitchen in one big stride, and spat it in the sink. “Merlin wept,” he said, half laughing, half angry. “Was that poison?”

“Longbottom Wine Estate,” Draco said. “All we’ve got, but we do have a lot of it.”

Lucius took the bottle with something like amazement. “‘Grapes grown in the historic Longbottom Vineyards in East Anglia,’” he read. “‘Aged in oak barrels handcrafted by a master Herbologist for just the right--’ so it was poison.” He opened the refrigerator and, after a long hopeless moment, took out a can of Diet Coke.

Harry bit back a smile and looked away, and caught Hydra trying not to laugh. It occurred to him that Lucius had probably done it for her sake, to lighten the mood. 

“I wouldn’t have expected such discriminating tastes from a man who drank the Dark Lord’s blood during the war,” Draco said, and Harry realized that he was absolutely furious with both Lucius and Narcissa.

Lucius turned, and Harry braced himself. Draco had told him once that when Abraxas Malfoy had died, Lucius had broken every window and mirror in a five mile radius of Malfoy Manor. “And he didn’t even like him,” Draco had said. “When he’s really upset--.” 

But Lucius surprised him by grinning. “Fair enough. Better blood than that, anyway.”

“Leave your father alone,” Narcissa said. “I promise you, only four people had any knowledge of this when it happened, and three of them are dead.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Hydra muttered, and that did break the tension.

Draco snorted, and Narcissa said defensively, “Well, it’s not as if I killed them myself.” She reached into her bag and drew out a vast white china bowl, and then a strip of razor blades in sterile packaging, and then a family-size box of sticking plasters.

The family that bleeds together, stays together, Harry thought, trying not to succumb to hysteria. He didn’t have much hope that it wasn’t true; he didn’t want to watch it be proved true, using blood magic, in his kitchen. He didn’t know how to say so. 

Narcissa filled the bowl with water and set it on the counter. “I don’t suppose you were taught this sort of thing at Durmstrang?” she asked.

Hydra shook her head. “Mostly we just played quidditch and dueled.”

Narcissa sighed. “And I know you weren’t taught it, either,” she said to Harry. “Blood magic is a great deal easier than wand magic, but it works better the purer your blood is-- and so it has fallen out of fashion.” She tore open the packaging of a razor blade with her teeth and reached for Hydra’s hand, drawing the blade quickly across the flesh at the base of her thumb and letting the blood from the clean, straight cut drip into the water. 

Hydra squeaked, but didn’t pull her hand away as Lucius squirted on antibacterial ointment and then capped it with a bandage. “You could have warned me,” she said reproachfully.

Narcissa ignored her. “The blood of a witch or wizard provides a channel for your will, just as a wand does. And because it is deeply personal, there is no need for elaborate gestures or Latin vocabulary.” Behind Narcissa, Draco rolled his eyes. He hated his mother’s little lectures about the nature of magic. Harry liked it, though-- the way Narcissa’s face changed when she was so caught up in her subject she forgot to be perfect. It made him think of Hermione, although he suspected neither woman would have appreciated the comparison.

Narcissa took a spoon out of the dish rack and swirled it so that the blood mixed with the water. “Draco’s grandfather Abraxas taught me to do this,” she said to Hydra. “He used blood for all of his Divinations, but also for ordinary scrying.”

Lucius sighed. “He went off his head a bit at the end there,” he said. “Well-- not just the end. The last forty years, really.”

Narcissa pretended not to hear him. “We don’t entirely understand why blood magic works, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t. It provides a number of useful shortcuts, and it is no darker than any other magic-- which is to say, only as dark as your intention in casting it--.”

“Mum,” Draco interrupted. “Seriously, let’s do this.”

“Fine,” Narcissa snapped. To Hydra, she said more gently, “Just clear your mind and ask for what you want. If it goes wrong, nothing will happen, and we’ll try something different.”

Hydra took a deep breath, staring into the water. And then, “I want to know where I came from,” she said, and her voice wobbled a little on the words. Harry swallowed and reached across the counter to take Draco’s hand.

The swirl of blood in the bowl was suddenly gone, and as Harry watched, a picture formed on the surface. Narcissa and Bellatrix, in dark robes, in the grounds of Malfoy Manor. Narcissa pressed a vial into Bellatrix’s hand. Bellatrix tucked it away and walked back into the house, into the big front room with the open fireplace. She was smiling. Harry had never seen her smile before unless someone was bleeding.

There was a fire blazing in the hearth, and Voldemort was seated near it in a carved armchair like a throne. Lucius was behind him, back straight as ever, pale hair gleaming. Harry hadn’t known him well enough during the war, and wouldn’t have cared then-- but he knew him well enough now to see that he had been desperately tired, and desperately unhappy. Harry looked, apprehensively, for Draco, but didn’t see him. Harry didn’t recognize any of the others, only Bellatrix, watching her master with soft and shining eyes.

There were voices, and then two more men came in. The first was Snape. The second, Harry thought was Rodolphus Lestrange, and Narcissa confirmed it. He listened to her identifying the men to Hydra, watched as Snape moved to stand beside Lucius and Lestrange went to join Bellatrix by the fire. It must have been Rodolphus; he leaned in to kiss Bellatrix’s mouth with a gentleness Harry had not expected, and she touched his cheek with a tenderness he would never have believed her capable of if he had not seen it. 

When Rodolphus stepped away, Bellatrix bit her lip, and now her dark eyes filled with tears. She went after him, and reached up to lift something carefully off his shoulder. The focus narrowed, the way a movie camera might have, to show that it was a single dark hair. Narcissa let out a breath that was almost a sob. “DNA,” she said. “The spell required DNA.”

“It couldn’t possibly have been Rodolphus’ DNA,” Harry said, looking from Lestrange, with his black eyes and hair and caramel skin to Hydra, fair and blue-eyed. 

“Then whose was it?” Hydra demanded. “I thought blood magic was supposed to be so easy.”

“Simple, not easy,” Narcissa corrected, but the spell’s focus was already shifting, obedient to Hydra’s wish. It panned past Rodolphus, past the monstrous ruin of Lord Voldemort’s face, past Lucius, to stop on Snape. 

Draco sucked in a breath and squeezed Harry’s fingers too hard. The firelight flickered softly, casting shadows on Snape’s face, smoothing away the lines around his mouth, squaring his chin, drawing the eye to his high cheekbones, his deepset eyes and strong jaw. He still looked nothing at all like Hydra.

“So which one was he?”, Hydra asked a little plaintively. 

“The only decent man in the lot,” Draco said, his voice and face completely expressionless. He pulled his hand away from Harry’s and touched Hydra’s cheek. “The best man in England. The hero of the story.”

Narcissa’s eyes were bright with tears but she was smiling. “It’s good news, darling. The best news, really. It won’t be admissible in court without either a Paternus or a blood test, but we’ll figure that out. Severus didn’t have any family at all, which makes you his heir. Although I’m not sure there was much property--.”

“I don’t want property,” Hydra said. “I wanted--.”

Family, Harry knew she was going to say, and suddenly couldn’t bear it. Lucius had slipped away quietly, presumably out onto the stairs. Harry went after him. He wanted to be angry at someone, and Hydra was a baby and Narcissa was out of his weight class and Draco-- Draco didn’t deserve it. 

Lucius was leaning on the banister, staring down at the mobile in his hand. Harry stepped out into the hallway and let the door bang shut. “So does this make Hydra your stepdaughter?” he asked, and Lucius raised his head.

“Severus and I were nothing at all to one another,” he said. His eyes were the same grey blue as the winter sea crashing against the walls of Azkaban, as Draco’s eyes. “We were friends, colleagues, lovers-- distant cousins, in the eyes of the Ministry and the world. Was it your idea or Draco’s to put veritaserum in the wine?”

“Mine,” Harry said, “although Draco agreed with me. It wasn’t for you specifically.”

“No, I expect it was for Narcissa. Well, Potter? This is your chance.”

“Did you never want more? With Snape?”

“One didn’t,” Lucius answered. “One didn’t even consider, then, that more was a possibility.”

Harry had had the interrogation course; he’d directed more than two dozen interrogations himself and been present at hundreds. Merlin only knew how many times Lucius Malfoy had been given veritaserum, either by Voldemort or by Aurors. Anything he said would be something he wanted to say. Still, Harry could ask. He could ask about Ivanovitch’s accident, Zabini’s sudden arrest for tax fraud, Lynch’s death-- there had been a lot of coincidental bad things happening to those who crossed the Malfoys, Harry felt sure. But Kingsley had investigated Lucius Malfoy for years without finding anything to prosecute. And anything Lucius confessed to tonight would be inadmissable.

Lucius knew that-- Lucius knew the law as well as any Auror. “It was always a possibility,” he said, watching Lucius. “If you’d wanted it enough-- there were others who made it work.”

“I am not Minerva McGonagall,” Lucius said, “crusades and cloisters and cats never had much appeal for me.” He smiled, the same rueful smile Harry loved on Draco. “And besides, my father wouldn’t have borne it. A son who was a Death Eater was one thing, but a son who was openly sexually deviant--.”

“It never fails to amaze me that two people as shitty as you and Narcissa could raise a son like Draco,” Harry said, turning to go back inside. But he had been an Auror for a long time, and he’d been good at his job. He stopped, hand on the doorknob. Lucius had been doing something with his phone when Harry’d come outside. Had Lucius come out here to get away from the others, to weep privately to himself? It seemed unlikely, but Harry couldn’t quite bring himself to ask.

“I’ve often thought you turned out terribly self-righteous for the son of a blood traitor and a Mudblood whore who spread her legs for every Pureblood who looked her way,” Lucius answered, so pleasantly that it took Harry a moment to register words. 

He had been in the field as an Auror for more than ten years. There was nothing he hadn’t heard. He kept his temper. “Who did you text last, Lucius? Who were you in such a hurry to tell about Hydra?”

Lucius went as still and cold as a basilisk. It was possible to resist veritaserum; it was likely that Lucius Malfoy had had the training necessary. But this wasn’t ordinary veritaserum. It was an experimental formula still in development, extraordinarily potent and effective but with a bitter, medicinal taste that was virtually undisguisable.

It tasted, in fact, very like the case of Longbottom Estates red that Harry had bought ten years ago and got custody of in his divorce and moved, unopened, into the flat he now shared with Draco. There was a moment when it looked as if Lucius was going to fight it, bite through his lip, bolt down the stairs. “I wanted to tell Severus that he had a daughter,” he said at last, “before everyone in the world knew.”

The door flew open and banged against the wall, and Harry grabbed Lucius by the front of his shirt and threw him into the flat. Lucius stumbled over the coffee table, caught himself, and stood, adjusting his cuffs fastidiously. 

“Is Severus Snape alive?”, Harry demanded.

“I was never entirely sure whether the Ministry knew,” Lucius said, and Harry saw that he’d decided to cut his losses and pretend that it had been his idea to confess all along. “It’s good to see they’re no more competent than they ever were.”

“Nice to see Mum isn’t the only one who’s been keeping a secret for the last twenty years,” Draco said. He was standing in the kitchen doorway, with the light behind him, and Harry couldn’t see his face.

“I gave my word,” Lucius said bleakly. He was looking at Draco, and past him, at Narcissa. “The day the Dark Lord died, Draco and Narcissa took Bellatrix’s body to Malfoy Manor and buried it in the grounds. And I meant to get Severus’s and do the same. He-- he wasn’t quite dead. I couldn’t get the medics to look at him, and they weren’t letting anyone Apparate out. But I remembered that Rabbie had left his car in a garage in Hogsmeade, and I went down and took it. He was beyond anything I could have done-- Severus-- but I got him stabilized and I drove him to a Muggle hospital near Hadrian’s Wall and left him.”

“And,” Harry prompted, when he looked like stopping. 

Lucius shrugged. “They locked everything down after that. I spent six months in Azkaban, and three years under house arrest. I thought he must be dead. I thought he’d died alone and been cut up for Muggle research. But so long as there was even a chance he was out there, I owed it to him to keep it quiet.”

“When did you find out he was alive?”

“I saw him,” Lucius said. “On the street, in London, quite by accident. It was five years ago, more or less. We didn’t make contact that day, but he sent me a message not long after. I didn’t believe it at first, but there were-- codes we used, during the war and after, that only he and I knew.” He caught Harry’s eye. “And those, I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to.”

He was bluffing, probably, but it was true that Harry could hardly justify using advanced interrogation methods to get decades-old codes. Not without cause, and not from Draco’s father. “Did you meet with him in person?”

Lucius shook his head. “He acknowledged that I’d saved his life, that he owed me a life debt.” He unlocked his phone and passed it Harry. “He gave me a mobile number and said to contact him if I ever needed to collect on it.”

“And that was the only contact you had with him? Why?”

Lucius flinched, really fighting the potion for the first time. “It was what he wanted,” he said finally. “He said he was done with the wizarding world, done with all of us. I traced the number he gave me. He’s living in Manchester, working as a night watchman for a Muggle firm.” He shrugged. “If anyone deserves a fresh start, it’s Severus.”

“So this was altruism,” Harry said, noticing the way Lucius’s hands had started to shake, the faint tremor of his jaw-- prolonged attempts to resist veritaserum could lead to vomiting, convulsions, even aneurysm, though Harry’d only seen that happen once before. “And did you ever--.”

“Harry,” Draco said, moving forward to push Lucius down on to the sofa. “That’s enough.” 

Harry started to protest and thought better of it. This wasn’t work; there weren’t lives on the line. 

“The only way I could have had Severus was if I gave up my family,” Lucius said, unprompted. “I had to choose between Severus and Narcissa, and I chose Narcissa.” His nose was bleeding a little, and he sounded more angry than tender, but Harry still got tears in his eyes. Draco looked over at him and smiled just a little. 

It was the closest Harry had ever seen the Malfoys come to a touching moment not involving sarcasm, but before he could really appreciate it, Lucius’s phone started to ring. Harry checked it. The caller was listed as _Potions_. “Is that him?”, he demanded.

“Probably,” Lucius admitted. “Almost everyone else I have listed is in this room.”

Harry pressed the green button. “Hello.”

There was a moment of silence, and then the man at the other end said, “Who is this?”.

“Put it on speaker,” Lucius said. “He won’t talk to you.”

Harry fumbled the speaker on and dropped the phone . “It’s me,” Lucius said. “Lucius Malfoy. Have you given this number to a great many people?”

“Prove it.” The thing Harry had always remembered best about Snape was his voice-- and this man’s voice was different, rougher, ruined; it was the voice of a man who had nearly had his throat torn out. That was what made Harry think that it was possible it could be Snape. He glanced at Draco, but Draco was watching the phone. He met Hydra’s eyes instead, and looked away when she smiled awkwardly at him. She wasn’t Draco’s. That was all that mattered. 

“Fuck you,” Lucius snapped. “How many people could possibly have sent you that text? How many of them would have used my name?”

“Very well,” Snape said. “Tomorrow. The usual place and time. Bring the girl, since you’re so certain she’s mine.”

He was gone, off the line before the Tracing Charm could take hold. Harry picked up the phone and looks at the texts. The last one listed was to _Potions_ , and it read, “CONGRATS DADY ITS A GRKL CA BT BELEBE YOUSLEPPT W? BELLATRX BLACKI.!”

“I was in a hurry,” Lucius said sulkily, “and the buttons are tiny.”

“He pretty much always texts like that,” Draco said, from behind Harry. He took the phone and turned it off, weighing it carefully in his hand as though he were warming up to throw it. But he set it down gently, in the end.

Afterward, when everyone had gone, Draco said, “I didn’t know. We buried something next to Aunt Bellatrix. He’d wrapped it in black plastic. It could--.” He swallowed hard. “It was definitely something dead, but it could have been an animal, maybe. He had the Prince signet ring, too, and Severus’s mask, but he could have gotten them off a body as well as a corpse.”

“Fuck,” Harry breathed, thinking of the possibilities, of digging up the garden at Malfoy Manor. Snape, wrapped in plastic-- or something wrapped in plastic, anyway. And Bellatrix, too. He’d seen bodies that old before. What was left of them. They’d be trying to match dental records, injury reports, if there was even anything left to identify. Masks, rings, wands-- they’d be all that was left. And Merlin alone knew how many other bodies were buried in the grounds. Abraxas Malfoy had been called the Butcher of Britain; his father John had been if anything more notorious.

The Aurors would never get a warrant, of course: it wasn’t illegal or even uncommon to bury the dead at home. It wasn’t as if there hadn’t been a dozen witnesses to Bellatrix Lestrange’s death, as if Harry himself hadn’t signed Snape’s death certificate.

“I didn’t know,” Draco said again. “Magicking fucking hell. I cannot believe they have both been lying about this shit for so long-- and not only to me, to each other.”

“Lie down with snakes, wake up with scales,” Harry said, and instantly wished he hadn’t. 

Draco turned and stared at him. “Is that-- is that an old Weasley family saying, Potter? Because it makes about that much sense.”

It was. “Anyway,” Harry said. “Do you think it’s true that Snape is Hydra’s father?”

“I want her to be. Not just for her sake, but for his.” Draco opened the cabinet under the sink, and came up with the bottle of vodka they’d hidden. “He was the best man I knew, growing up,” he said. “I know he was an absolute shit to you but--.”

“He was the bravest man in England,” Harry said quietly, “and one of the best men I’ve ever known. I don’t need to have liked him to acknowledge that.”  
Draco came around the counter and kissed him for that. “You’re pretty great yourself, Potter,” he said. “Let’s have an enormous drink and go to bed.”

In the morning Hydra was waiting for them, sitting on the hood of the Golf next to a tray with five cups of coffee, even though Harry knew Narcissa’d told her they were meeting Snape at seven in the evening. If Draco’s resolute lack of eye contact hadn’t given it away, Harry would’ve known by the way she’d gotten the coffee exactly right.

“She deserves to meet him,” he said, and laughed at the surprise on Draco’s face. “And it’s not as though we need another generation of secrets kept.”

Draco grinned. “Speaking of which, the kids emailed me last night. They want to meet their new sister.”

Neither of them was looking at Hydra, but Harry heard the tiny sigh she made. And for the first time, the thought that this girl who might be Lord Voldemort’s daughter-- who was certainly Bellatrix Lestrange’s-- would be his family, was not unimaginable. 

They met the elder Malfoys at the edge of the cemetery at St. Jerome’s and followed Lucius down the path past Harry’s parents’ graves, to a plain stone that bore only the name Pyrite Malfoy. 

“You met Professor Snape at your mother’s grave?”, Draco asked. “Seriously, Dad?”

Lucius sighed. “She died when I was four,” he pointed out. “I barely remember her. And besides, it was rather conveniently deserted most of the time. It wasn’t as if your grandfather spent a great deal of time visiting.”

“The official cause of death was infidelity,” Draco said bitchily. “It runs in the family.”

Harry wasn’t sure whether to be appalled or amused, but when Narcissa said absently, “Don’t be vulgar, darling,” he couldn’t help snorting.

“Whatever,” Draco muttered, but he did it quietly enough only Harry heard him. 

And then Snape was there, seemingly out of thin air. He looked-- he looked the same, in all the important ways, his shoulders as broad, his nose as imposing. His hair was shorter and streaked with gray, and the collar of his shirt was open over the faded silver of the scar at his throat. Harry could feel himself staring, and could not look away.

“Severus,” Lucius said, sounding as if he were reciting a charm he’d never heard before, in a language he didn’t speak.

“Lucius,” Snape answered, and Harry could hear him smirking. “Narcissa. Draco. Mr. Potter. And you. Presumably, you are--.”

“Hydra. Hydra Black.” She sounded as shellshocked as Harry felt, which wasn’t surprising; Snape’s voice had lost a little of its beauty, perhaps, but none of its power. 

Snape moved forward and caught her chin and tilted it to the rising sun. He was fast, still, as fast as Harry remembered, but Hydra didn’t flinch. “You have the look of my grandmother, perhaps,” he said consideringly, “but then, she was a Malfoy.” 

Harry squinted. Now that he saw them together, he could imagine it. In profile, her nose looked bigger, and her hair was darker than he’d thought, and straighter-- “You’re a Metamorphmagus,” he snapped.

Hydra turned toward him. “It’s hardly a secret.” Harry was fairly sure she wasn’t sneering, but on what was essentially Snape’s face, everything looked that way.

“Give me your hand,” Snape himself said, and when she held it out obediently, “ _Sectumquondarum_.”

A line of blood appeared across Hydra’s palm. “Christ, you people are psychopaths,” Harry muttered. 

Snape ignored him and slashed open his own palm. “Blood to blood,” he said, and between their joined hands something sparked. He dropped Hydra’s hand at once and stepped back. “So. She’s mine, then. What exactly is it you want from me?”

“Acknowledge her,” Lucius said quietly. In the silence that followed, Harry turned to Draco for the first time since Snape had come. To his surprise, Draco’s eyes were on the trees that fringed the little cemetery, and he only shook his head the tiniest bit when Harry reached for his hand. Narcissa was watching, too, and Harry could see that her wand was in her hand already.

 

He felt the first stirrings of the old excitement. It had been a long time since he’d been in the field, and he’d missed it. And now that his attention wasn’t wholly consumed by Snape, he felt, too, the sensation of being watched. 

“I, Severus Snape,” Lucius was reciting and Snape was repeating, “do hereby pronounce--.” Harry ignored it, focusing on the presence in the woods, until he felt the snap of the spell clicking into place.

Snape took another step back. “I owed you a life debt,” he said to Lucius, “but it’s done now between us.” 

“As you wish, of course-- but, Severus--.”

And then Snape was gone.

“Fuck,” Hydra said. 

“Yeah, fuck is a good way to put it,” Draco agreed. “Look, Granger, we know you’re in there, you might as well come out.”

Narcissa made a face. “Really, Draco? If that’s who it is, I think your father and I had better go. It’s entirely too early in the morning to be tortured by Unspeakables.” She kissed all of them impartially, and waved in salute to the trees.

Lucius stopped in front of them, and said, “I’m sorry, son.” And when Draco refused to even look at him, “Harry.” It wasn’t precisely an apology, but it was more than Harry had expected. He tried not to expect much from Lucius. To Hydra, he said, “Welcome to the family,” and pressed something small gently into her hand.

When he was gone, Hydra unfolded her fingers to show them a gold signet ring, engraved with a crown and sword that Harry supposed must be the heraldry of the Princes.

Draco looked down at it, his expression unreadable, and then at Harry, and then at Hermione, who was advancing determinedly, her jeans wet with dew almost to the knees and her hair as wild as it had been when she was fifteen. “You didn’t have Greg in there with you, did you? It’s only that I’d hate to think we interrupted a spot of snogging.”

“Breakfast,” Harry said hastily, to prevent the argument he knew was about to break out. “I’m buying. You don’t have practice for hours, and Hermione doesn’t have work.” He caught Draco’s hand in his and squeezed it, and then herded them all onto the path. He didn’t hesitate this time as they passed James and Lily’s headstones, because for the moment he felt as though he already had as much family as he could stand.


End file.
